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Free is too expensive (Economist)Free is too expensive (Economist)Posted Apr 2, 2012 8:32 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by shmerl Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)
But again, KDE is a non profit, and directions are defined by the community. I think you don't understand what “non profit” means. It looks like you perceive “non profit” as “someone altruistic who's fighting for the better future” and who's, obviously, “is not driven by money”. Nothing can be further from truth! Here is an example of non-profit organisation. It precedes KDE, GNOME and Mozilla and deals with commercial interests all the time. Nonprofit just means that participants are not planning to ever withdraw profits. They are supposed to be used to further pursue the goal of given non-profit. In a lot of cases these goals are better served when non-profit cooperates with some other for-profit entities - and when you do that you must think about market, about 90% of people just don't care about software in this sort of way, etc.
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Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 2, 2012 16:33 UTC (Mon) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
By "non profit" in this case I don't mean the formal definition, but the fact that the direction of the project is not dictated by interests to gain money (which will inevitably result in conflict with public interest), but by community interests. If it sounds more altruistic than most commercial companies - then it is. Mozilla and KDE are good examples of this. Of course these project need to sustain themselves, and need income. I was talking about what defines the direction of their development.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 5, 2012 13:34 UTC (Thu) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
It's lovely to not care solely about money, but it's awful to be antagonist about money. Even if it were true that money will corrupt even the best intentions eventually, until that happens you fight the good fight. It could take quite long time.
To use an analogy: Bioware used to make great games for over a decade, founded by people who were evidently very passionate about gaming, until EA bought them and apparently destroyed the company and its values from inside. No matter: I think that the world is still better for Bioware's existence, even if it never again made another good game.
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