On Friday 24 February 2006 1:32 am, Harshal wrote:
On 2/24/06, Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray debarshi.ray@gmail.com wrote:
Interesting question. I think I would be doing it still. Monetarily Free Software itself is not as rewarding as proprietary stuff, but then is it not the love of it that we do it rather than 'other' reasons?
ya. there will be some people who will do it. and we need them badly if tomorrow something like this really happens. but a house/city/state/country/world dont just run on love, you need to a healthy ecomony for all the levels mentioned above for stable surroundings.
If u are implying that swantra (could be freebeer too) software does not foster a healthy economy u are absolutely wrong. The one thing that fosters healthy economies is knowledge and swantra software creates and puts knowledge into the open. It lowers the entry barrier to software and other industries. Closed software raises entry barriers (both knowledge and capital). In a monetary capital starved economy closed software is an absolute curse. The implications of closing access to knowledge is too horrendous to comprehend. India has suffered one closure in the form of caste based society which arbitrarily barred sections of society from acquiring knowledge.
so some will still love the free software and will support it in whichever they can, but they will choose some other means of making money to keep life going.
It requires skill to make money from swantra software as opposed to skulldugerry with closed software (there may be a few exceptions but i have yet to come across one).