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loss leader?loss leader?Posted Jan 14, 2005 1:30 UTC (Fri) by jonth (subscriber, #4008)In reply to: loss leader? by ccyoung Parent article: Quasar Accounting under the GPL
Not necessarily criticising, but it sounds like you're after "free as in beer" programs, which is most emphatically not what the GPL is about. GPL is not a free ride - it's an opportunity to join and help a community.
It doesn't matter if they're doing this as a ploy (and I agree that it's quite probably a marketing ploy to attenpt to leverage their POS products) or not - the code is GPL, so we can use it without reprisals in other GPL products. Who cares why it's GPL as long as it is!
(And I don't know about you, but the functional version of CUPS works just fine for me)
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loss leader? Posted Jan 14, 2005 2:32 UTC (Fri) by bpepers (guest, #27237) [Link] As one of the two people who decided to go the open source route and as the developer of 99.999% of Quasar I can tell you that the choice to go open source is a more complicated one than simply saying its a loss leader. There is a pride aspect of seeing your software used all over the world and I personally get a lot out of this. There is a feeling that the business accounting area has reached the point where its ripe for a good open source product to take over and I want my product to be that and not one of the ones that have to react to it happening. There is a desire to move to more of a support and consulting role rather than trying to sell our product because I think there is more money in this and that its a better model for our product and the market. There is a desire to give something back to the open source community for all I've received in development tools and other software. There is the desire to get more eyes on the code and more testers to make Quasar a better product. There is the feeling that Linux is such a wonderful fit for business operations and the desire to see it used more in this area. Its hard to decide which of these is the most dominant one since it changes over time...
And there are also negative aspects to the open source route. There is the fear that you will lose all control of your product after many years of very long hours to get it where it is. There is the worry that I've done something really stupid in the code so it can be daunting to have it all hanging out there for review. There is the worry that you will be misunderstood in the effort to try to balance open source with making a living. There is the fear that while this may make Quasar very popular it might kill the revenue stream that I depend on to allow me to continue working on Quasar.
I hope to help build a community around Quasar and to see it grow into a giant of the business accounting world and of course I hope to find a way to make a buck along the way to stay in business!
loss leader? Posted Jan 14, 2005 14:01 UTC (Fri) by headsman (guest, #17057) [Link] Weel, I wish you good in all this!
I've also read the FAQ about the licencing, and I'm very glad to see that you understand just right the use of the GPL; because I tought that you would do something similar to MySQL, which I believe to be wrong about their licencing understanding (but someone can tell me I'm wrong here).
Best regards.
Quasar && QB Posted Jan 14, 2005 22:48 UTC (Fri) by a_hippie (subscriber, #34) [Link] Bravo bpepers for making your decision to GPL this part of your package. Since this company was so kind to respond to an earlier querry from me regarding a package that is enough QB like to help migrate my wife over from vintage MS98. I think you have made the right decision personally. I hope to see the package(s) appear in some of the well known/used distro's.... that would get the exposure going and begin the feedback process.
I really hope you make it happen! Good luck to you are your partners there.
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