On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 04:14:27PM -0600, Monique Y. Mudama wrote: > On 2006-04-23, Kevin Mark penned: > > [some snippage] > > > In this context, free software user can never buy the software from > > a company because their is no company and their is no legal monetary > > contact between Debian and its developers and thus no one can make > > the free software developers do anything. The free software model > > does allow a free market whereby any other developer can be paid or > > convinced to do what you want. > > > > But it seems the free software developers are usually simply > > 'scratching their itch' to their satisfaction and others may or may > > not like the result. And the average users is more or less > > powerless to force the free software developer to listen to them > > sans forking over money and the developers accepting a contract to > > do what they want. > > > When you say that the average user is powerless to force the free > software developer to listen to them, I'm wondering what you're > comparing this experience to. Have you ever, as an average user, been > able to convince a commercial software company to do something for > you? I'd love to hear about it, because that hasn't been my > experience. I agree that users do not have any say indivually but company try to see what most folks may want in order to keep them buying stuff. And then there are the mega-corps that pay software co.'s to customize stuff--money does talk there. This is as true for Adobe(for acrobat) as it is with Novell( for the gnome desktop) or Ubuntu. FLOSS users also dont have much say either, so they're in also most the same boat. But of course floss users have the source and that is an advantage if you can pay someone to make your changes but this still does not mean the original dev will accept your paid-for patches. > > I don't understand why the idea of spending money to get an open > source solution seems, apparently, unreasonable to you. I'm grateful > for all of the free (as in beer) open source software I'm able to use. > But as a developer, I'd get mighty P.O.'ed if someone told me I "had" > to code something. Offer me money, and I might accept. (Note: I'm > not a debian developer. I don't mean that anyone should offer me > money to write something for debian, although if enough money were > offered, I might consider it *grin*.) I have nothing against paying FLOSS devs and also grateful for their work. And as you said FLOSS folks might get PO'd if someone demanded a feature but proprietary devs do not have that luxury becuase PO'd = out-the-door. cheers, Kev > > -- > monique > > Help us help you: > http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System | go to counter.li.org and | | `- http://www.debian.org/ | be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org |
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