Re: Canonical's business model
Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org> writes:
> I agree with most of what you've said, except for the assertion that
> individual people are fundamentally different in this respect. Debian
> developers, in general, work on Debian in their spare time, and make
> their living by other means. Often these pursuits come into conflict,
> being in competition for the same resources (primarily time), as many of
> us know all too well.
Hm, yes, that's a good point. I still feel like it's a bit different, in
that at the level of individuals, it tends to be a different in quantity
of contribution rather than time and one gets more warning and in ways
that are easier to deal with, but this isn't *always* the case.
> The fact that for-profit companies need to create economic justification
> for free software contributions doesn't mean that they can't be valuable
> contributors. A huge volume of such contributions have come from
> profit-motivated initiatives, both at the individual and organizational
> level.
Oh, absolutely. Definitely agreed. I think it's fantastic when people
get to work on free software as part of their job, and those people are a
huge resource for free software. There are inherent limits to how much
one can do this as a hobby, and someone who's paid to work full-time on
free software can simply do quite a bit more than someone who has to do it
as a hobby and balance it against getting paid.
Finding good ways of taking advantage of the work of people who are paid
to work on free software is very important for any free software project,
including Debian.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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