SchoolTool Calendar 0.10 Released [LWN.net]

SchoolTool Calendar 0.10 Released

Posted Jun 15, 2005 16:51 UTC (Wed) by peace (guest, #10016)
In reply to: SchoolTool Calendar 0.10 Released by nstraz
Parent article: SchoolTool Calendar 0.10 Released

I'm going to be chuckling all day now, thanks :-)

What I have found is that people, organizations and government (I have talked to all) understand the need to pay for tools and services. They just don't know how to do that with Free software because the mechanisms are either not apparent or not available. All they see are "download now" buttons and a choir of people singing, "switch, it's free"! Maybe we should start spelling OpenSource as Open$ource :)

As Free software becomes mainstream it is not unresonable to expect the larger society to contribute economicaly to it's sustainability. In fact I have found that this is actually what organizations and government want to do. The system of economics is set up to do exactly that. People who understand economics are suspicious of free$, as they should be. It's not sustainable given the demands of the market, which is what Free software is integrating with.

While "free like a puppy" is qute, whats needed is an explanation of the process for involvement. I think that is largely the responsibilty of the Free software VAR's. They need to become more aware of the need to educate their clients and set up the infrastructure for sending support back to the projects that are developing the software that they use as the core of their business. Maybe "Free like a garden" is more to my point.

Kind Regards

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SchoolTool Calendar 0.10 Released

Posted Jun 16, 2005 0:29 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]

I think it's a bit early to be up in arms about not having enoguh people contributing things back.

even with people who don't contribute things back the total number of people who do is climbing, it doesn't matter that much that the percentage is droppign slightly, the total amount of free software is climbing as never before.

also people (and orginizations) tend to start useing something that has no obligations much easier then things that do, but as their use grows and they want new features added, thats the time to talk to them about contributing back