If you think that people should be obligated to pay you, then release your software under that license.
Other commercial Linux companies have found workable business models with the GPL. SuSE charges for CDs, while Red Hat charges for support.
Meanwhile, Mandrake and Slackware give away their product away for free in iso form and basically panhandle.
What's ironic is that the same people that try to guilt the public into supporting a given freely available commercial distro turn around and say, "Hey, don't bitch, you're not paying for it!" when its quality/features/development pace is criticized, never bothering to realize that if they didn't give away the farm they could use revenues to add value to their product and improve it and give paying customers a real incentive to purchase it instead of freeloading.
The other viable alternative as I see it would be for Pat to take Slackware in the direction of a non-profit organization and bring some volunteer developers onboard while soliciting donations from users like Debian does.
I believe that if you regularly use and rely on certain software - OS or not - that you should be obliged to pay something in return to the support the process.
Perhaps if the British weren't already paying out their arses for a managerial nanny state with socialized medicine they'd have some money left in their pockets for charity, eh mate?;)
They benefit financially from Volkerding's work, but pay nothing, and they don't even think they should pay anything.
OTOH, The GPL doesn't require Pat to make free isos of Slackware available--that's his choice.
Other than charitable satisfaction, there's no advantage to buying an official Slackware CD set versus downloading the isos or buying them from a generic Linux CD vendor.
Giving away your product for free when purchasing the "official" version of it offers no user advantages (other than funding continued development) doesn't strike me as a sound business model for a _commercial_ software company.
I like OpenBSD and SuSE's model better, which allows the developers to make a decent living while still giving a free product to the public. If you want the OS via FTP download, it's there for you for free, but if you want it on CD, you need to buy it.
I'd like to see Pat finally incorporate FTP installation into Slackware and restrict CDs to paying customers for his own bottom line....and add pkgsrc to Slack, of course. Some of the features people would like Slack to have might actually be feasible if the company started pulling in enough revenues to keep some other developers on the payroll, at least back to the level they had before Walnut Creek sold out and kicked Slackware to the curb.
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For Win32, I like Gravity. It was originally made by MicroPlanet, but after they folded Tom Bates picked up the baton and maintains it.
Other commercial Linux companies have found workable business models with the GPL. SuSE charges for CDs, while Red Hat charges for support.
Meanwhile, Mandrake and Slackware give away their product away for free in iso form and basically panhandle.
What's ironic is that the same people that try to guilt the public into supporting a given freely available commercial distro turn around and say, "Hey, don't bitch, you're not paying for it!" when its quality/features/development pace is criticized, never bothering to realize that if they didn't give away the farm they could use revenues to add value to their product and improve it and give paying customers a real incentive to purchase it instead of freeloading.
The other viable alternative as I see it would be for Pat to take Slackware in the direction of a non-profit organization and bring some volunteer developers onboard while soliciting donations from users like Debian does.
Perhaps if the British weren't already paying out their arses for a managerial nanny state with socialized medicine they'd have some money left in their pockets for charity, eh mate? ;)
OTOH, The GPL doesn't require Pat to make free isos of Slackware available--that's his choice.
Other than charitable satisfaction, there's no advantage to buying an official Slackware CD set versus downloading the isos or buying them from a generic Linux CD vendor.
Giving away your product for free when purchasing the "official" version of it offers no user advantages (other than funding continued development) doesn't strike me as a sound business model for a _commercial_ software company.
I like OpenBSD and SuSE's model better, which allows the developers to make a decent living while still giving a free product to the public. If you want the OS via FTP download, it's there for you for free, but if you want it on CD, you need to buy it.
I'd like to see Pat finally incorporate FTP installation into Slackware and restrict CDs to paying customers for his own bottom line....and add pkgsrc to Slack, of course. Some of the features people would like Slack to have might actually be feasible if the company started pulling in enough revenues to keep some other developers on the payroll, at least back to the level they had before Walnut Creek sold out and kicked Slackware to the curb.