| What the other poster is saying is that > The authors of proprietary software control what you do with that software. He's fine with this, as are many other people. And I think that's a fair point: if you really are going into the deal with eyes open, knowing you're going to be locked in and tied down to whatever platform, you should be free to make that choice. Of course, if you're smart, you'll drive a hard bargain, knowing that in the future you won't be able to. Stallman says that choice simply should not exist in that proprietary software should not exist. The 'sell support' thing has some fairly serious limitations that make it less than ideal. Many software products - especially the end user variety - cost a lot to make. Selling 'support' for a product that works well and doesn't require much of it is not a good way to recoup all those sunk costs. Since you cite 'countless' companies, how about we actually count a few and look at their revenue models? * Redhat: first of all, they distribute a lot more software than they produce, which is fine, but the scope for that is pretty limited. Also, they basically use trademark law as an end-run around software freedom. You can't redistribute and call it Redhat, and you can't buy any support unless it's real Redhat, and support is a subscription, not a per-incident kind of thing. * Mysql: they used the "GPL'ed library code" gig to try and get people wanting to embed the code in their proprietary products to cough up some cash. Legitimate business model, but would not work without proprietary software! Also, most things aren't libraries. What else? |