On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 4:43 PM, Michael Collins <msc@freeswitch.org> wrote:
On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Madovsky <infos@madovsky.org> wrote:
its' also an excellent way for big companies to avoid to pay employees to make all the dev work also....
Indeed it is. Most of us in the OSS world say, "So what?" We've given our work away for "free" in return for other considerations: free advertising, free distribution (via Internet downloads), bragging rights, and growing a software-based ecosystem that allows us to tap into other revenue streams like private consulting or even writing a book. If big companies "take" our stuff and use it then they're growing the ecosystem. The choice of OSS licenses available to us gives us the necessary protection from large corporations hijacking our stuff. (This includes things like CC for documents, photos, sounds/music, etc.)
Many big companies ( IBM for example ) pay employees to contribute to open source. I am an employee of a company that has paid me to contribute to open source. I have also given away many of my contributions in the past and am very glad to report that they are alive and well. That is a terrific feeling. On the other hand, if only I had a penny for each closed source byte I have contributed to the big bit bucket in the sky.... Further, OSS is really the ONLY way for little guys to compete. Linux would have never become what it is if it were a bit company closed source project. -- M. Ranganathan