[daly]

Apparently you've avoided one of the greatest joys of open source... forks.

I worked for 7 years on an open source project with hundreds of people subscribed. My most trusted maintainer started a drumbeat about project goals that ended up causing two forks, decimating the user community, and destroying a lot of potential. Even more interesting is that all I ever seem to get, if I get mentioned at all, is negative press. But, as John Gorka once said, "What matters most is what you do for free".

As for the worry about combining open source and money... forget it. William Stein, lead developer of Sage, built Sage using grant funds and graduate students. Unfortunately the grant money dried up and the students graduated. He has since taken a leave of absence and started a company in the hope of keeping the project alive. Wish him luck.

I've looked for funding from a number of different sources, government, industry, and a separate business, all without success. I spent an average of $3,000 per year for the last 16 years, all out of personal funds. That's assuming my time is $0/hour.

Rest assured, mixing open source and money is the least of your worries.

So why do open source programming? Real musicians MUST make music, in spite of poverty wages. It's not what they DO, it's what they ARE. Similarly, I'm a programmer... it is what I am, not what I do.

[adekok]

> As for the worry about combining open source and money... forget it.

I dunno... I've done well. Offices in Canada and France, 6 people working for me (not all full-time).

The key for me is to sell services around the software, and also sell support. If it takes people 10 days to figure out how to do something, a decent percentage of them will pay you to do it for them.

But it has to be the right market, too. Selling to consumers is a non-starter. You need to sell to people who have money.

[Arizhel]

>But it has to be the right market, too. Selling to consumers is a non-starter. You need to sell to people who have money.

What about small businesses? Is that a pipe dream, or do you think it's possible to get them to actually spend money on service and support? (I'm asking because I have a business idea for software which would only appeal to SMBs, generally smaller ones I think.)

[adekok]

The problem with SMBs is marketing. How do they know to use your software? What is the cost of sales?

I've had 6 months of negotiations with customers. For a large contract, that's OK. For a small one, it's not worth my time.

[pjmlp]

> Selling to consumers is a non-starter. You need to sell to people who have money.

Hence why the year of desktop FOSS will never happen, given how consumers related to packaged software.

Also the profits on iOS vs Android stores is a good example of it.

[pjc50]

So you have an economic incentive not to make it too usable?

(This isn't an entirely serious complaint, but usability does tend to be an issue in Free software, and as you say consumers have no interest in paying for anything)

[adekok]

> So you have an economic incentive not to make it too usable?

And... do commercial companies don't have the same incentive?

The difference with me is that I have pride in my work. I do good engineering.

The reason I charge for services is that designing complex RADIUS systems is hard. It's about specialized expertise in esoteric technical areas.

There are 100's of 1000's of sites using my software who have downloaded it gratis. They have small needs, and the basic software works.

As for usability... it's a pet peeve of mine. Everything is documented. You get full information about what the system is doing, and why. That's usability that none of the commercial products have.