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by veritas213 5018 days ago
this is so silly..so a company now doesnt have the right to try to make money? are they now "selling out"? silly revolt
2 comments

As someone who contributes OSHW derivatives, it feels really shitty to have a company go from very open (Makerbot in 2009) to very closed (Makerbot in 2012). Contrast this with Google Wave, originally closed, then they opened it.

The same thing is true with pricing a product: it's very difficult to raise prices, while it's very easy to lower them.

Something being open != you cannot make money with it. This notion is stupid, false and dishonest.

Besides, I don't think companies have a "right to make money", anyways. That would lead to government enforced business models and the utter insanity to which this leads can currently be observed in the copyright industries and their ongoing fight against free speech.

> Something being open != you cannot make money with it. This notion is stupid, false and dishonest.

In fact, open source is the money-making arm of free software.

That's mostly because those who want to make money don't like to call it "Free Software". Blame the English language for having only a single widespread word for "costless" and "libre".