[Haskell-cafe] Re: Hugs on iPhone

[Achim Schneider]

"John A. De Goes" <john at n-brain.net> wrote:

> You simply can't make a living selling GPL software. If the
> software's complicated enough and you know your way around it, then
> you can sell support & maintenance. However, those conditions doesn't
> apply to consumer software, because consumers don't want complicated
> software.
>
Sure, times have changed. Still, go to a campus, figure out who doesn't
have internet access (personally, back then I bought a 100mb zip drive
to get my software). You might not be able to earn a living burning
Debian CD's, but you're going able to finance your beer consumption.
Not only because you're bound to get some free beer while helping
people to install it.

OTOH, magazines still come with CDs or DVDs, which means that there's a
demand for "hard-copies" of software. People _will_ buy your "1000 best
open source games" collection. The costs of setting up distribution and
manufacturing will prevent others from doing the same: They'd rather
distribute other OSS software, avoiding competition that's only going
to lessen their own profits. Additionally to the physical medium,
you're providing the service of compiling the compilation, in the
first place: I can tell you it's a bugger to rummage through OSS games
to find out what's cool. 

Surely, it's not a big market and won't make you a millionaire, but no
source of income can be used by everyone without breaking down.


Just to make things clear: I wouldn't hand out venture capital to such
an endeavour, either.

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