Wine license change

Anthony Taylor tony at searhc.org
Wed Feb 13 18:33:00 CST 2002


On Wed, 2002-02-13 at 15:42, Roger Fujii wrote:

> 
> but I wouldn't use the word 'thrive' to describe a company that is barely
> profitable (which is what the original poster used).  It's not my opinion
> (and probably not even Brent's) that it is *impossible* to eek out a living.
> I think the point is that it is DIFFICULT to do so.  I don't mind hearing
> GPL advocates say that it is more socially desirable, equitable... (not
> that I necessarily agree with it, but it is a valid point of view).  But
> I don't see any evidence that it is helpful to commerical entities (which is
> some of the reasoning behind a license switch).

Currently, there are only a few software companies making huge amounts
of money.  It's not *just* Free Software-based software companies. 
Cygnus had problems making money; so is Borland.  Red Hat isn't terribly
profitable yet; Be Corp. went belly-up.  Fact is, it's hard for a
start-up to make money at all in the current software industry.  It's
not the licensing model that is the problem; it's the industry itself.

Yes, it's easier to make money when you induce artificial scarcity in a
product.  But as Word Perfect Corp, Ashton-Tate, Paperback Software,
iCat Corp, Banyan, NeXT, and Digital Research will tell you, it ain't
easy making money in the software world, no matter what.

			- Tony





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