[Alug]GPL, freedom and bread - main

30 May 2003


      I've just been reading several documents at gnu.org explaining the benefits
of free software over proprietary software (indexed here
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html)
After reading these articles/essays I very much feel that following the
guidelines of the GNU Public License is the single best way to develop
software in most if not all cases and holds benefits both for developers,
end users and society as a whole.
However, I still feel that if I were asked to justify this view to someone I
would have trouble doing so, because my understanding of the underlying
concepts is still a little sketchy. In particular, I can quite readily
accept that writing software under the GPL is the best way and I'm the kind
of person that would still program even if I was not being paid to do it.
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? Short of selling their body
on the streets (which may be frowned upon by aforementioned family) or
starting up a farm and becoming self sufficient, where does the doe come in?
I believe that job satisfaction comes over money every time, but there are
still sources of money in free (as in speech not beer) software and the
documents make it quite clear that you can quite legitimately sell such
software for whatever price the market will pay, providing you follow the
guidelines so that the freedom of the software is maintained. If a baker
buys his own flour, he owns the bread he bakes and can sell it. If I write
software but I don't own it, I can still sell it, but people can get it for
free from elsewhere and can get it from a friend, which as an alternative to
paying 9.9 times out of 10 they will. At the moment this may not be such a
problem as people may prefer to buy the software in a package with an
instruction manual and bundled support for the program.
However, I would argue that the ideal program would be intuitive to the
point where it required no documentation or training and support is mainly
for when things go wrong, which an ideal program wouldn't. In instances
where a form of support or source of information IS required, which will
always happen, the online community can often offer support that is equal to
that of paid support for free, and this is actively encouraged within online
forums and instant messaging. With the spread of broadband internet
connections swapping information or programs between people is becoming even
easier and cheaper than copying a CD to the point where the cost per byte is
negligible, which is the way it should be.
The only source of income that therefore remains is writing bespoke
solutions for a particular customer where that customer would pay you to
port your program to fit their own business practises rather than work on
the features you would normally put as a high priority. However, if this is
also released under the GPL will the number of cases not be very small and
no basis for a decent sized income?
I don't like the fact that my only concerns stem from the need for cash, but
it is, unfortunately, a necessity. I'm posting this rather long message here
because I know there are veterans on the subject lurking in the corner (or
not) who may be able to enlighten me. I believe the answer to my questions
lie on well trodden ground and hopefully those answers will help me in my
active support for free software. If there is an easy answer, then forgive
my ignorance but I make no apologies for asking silly questions, someone has
to ask them :)
Thanks for your time,
Ben "tola" Francis
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there is no spoon... damn, now I have to eat my yoghurt with a fork.