Hi again slef
Ben Francis ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk wrote: [...]
However, the harsh reality is that programmers need money to put bread
on
the table and apparently some geeks even have families to support! Just
say
someone were to program full time and released all of their code under
the
GPL, where does their bread actually come from? [...]
Actually my entire email could have been reduced to that snip, I apologise for waffling ;)
Nothing even compels you to release all GPL'd code for free to everyone every time at the same time, even though some people seem to think that.
So what are you saying? That you don't have to release your code straight away, but can hang onto it for a bit? I'm not sure I follow... could you expand on this a little? Give an example?
Your questions might be restated as "how does anyone make money in a free marketplace?" and there are lots of books on that.
Could anyone suggest a good book on this subject?
After all this time of being told that computing is a science, or an engineering discipline, it's closer to being something like performance mathematics, with all the questions of how to make money from performing an art.
Indeed, I'm not a programmer, but a code poet ;)
If you want to discuss this further, you might find more viewpoints on the fsfe-uk list (linked from www.affs.org.uk -> Membership -> discuss or similar) or the Oekonux project list (via www.oekonux.org I think).
Thanks, looks like I have a lot of reading to do!
Ben "tola" Francis