On 21 January 2013 19:36, Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> wrote: > I'm wondering if anyone would be offended or object with a blog post > along the lines of "How to make money with Apache OpenOffice"? > > I appreciate that Apache is a non-profit and that we do not pay for > developers, etc. But we are also commercially friendly, and our > permissive license and focus on consumable source releases supports > this. One view is that this is good for the community, to encourage > commercial interest in a product, since that leads to investment in > the code, and investment leads to a larger, more diverse community. > Yes, some will take and never give back. But for many commercial > ventures there are notable advantages to working with the community, > having credibility and commit privileges, etc. So it s a win-win, I > think. > > The proposed blog post would cover a few business models, emphasize > the opportunity brought on by the end of life of MS Office 2003, etc. > > If anyone is uncomfortable with this I can do it on my personal blog, > of course. But it is relevant to the AOO project, so I'd prefer to > put it here. >
For me it would depend a lot on the wording. It is a fact that people/companies make money of our non-paid work, but to me it is another level to actively promote it. The right place to put it, is as you write the AOO blog and The business models should be presented in a way that (if for nothing else, then pure morally) part of the earnings should flow back to AOO, in order to keep us going, I do not really see it as win-win, when a company makes money and has commit rights. I (as many others) have commit rights and do not earn money, we do it for other reasons. This is of course just my opinion which in one sentence is "good initative, but feeling comfortable depends a lot on content of the business models" Jan I. > > No rush to decide. I won't get to this for another week, at least. > > -Rob >
