[billpatrianakos]

Exactly! That's my biggest problem with Stallman's beliefs. Let's take Red Hat Linux for example. Anyone can get or modify Linux free. Even Red Hat itself is open source. So Rwd Hat can't really make a buck selling Linux so they make money on training and support. If I wanted Red Hat I could certainly find an ISO somehwere online easily or I could just download Fedora. So for them it's great but what about the guy who writes a cool text editor for Linux? If that's open source then what does he do? Hope everyone sticks to the honor system and pays? How do you make money charging for support with that type of project?

There are far more projects like the example I gave than companies like Red Hat. You're far more likely to find little solo acts who either can't provide support, dont want to, or even if they did wouldn't be able to sell it because it's just not that necessary. Imagine buying a license for support for some text editor you like and calling the support line to ask how to program in some macro or something. It's just not happening.

Why do FOSS folks always equate closed software with evil? Couldnt we simply want to keep our code to ourselves so we can make money? In most cases 90% of the value of a developer's app comes from the fact that no one else has the code. Just because I've closed the source doesn't mean I'm adding back doors and spyware to my app. It just means I'm protecting my income stream. Demanding that all software release code so that people can extend the app to their liking presupposes that people want to modify the code. Of all the FOSS software I've downloaded and used I really haven't ever wanted to modify the app except in a few rare cases. It sometimes seems like this FOSS ideology completely forgets that not everyone is a programmer or assumes everyone should want to be a programmer.