Lucy wrote: > How to make money from free software is an interesting and difficult > topic
I really don't think that's true - for me, it's a straightforward and simple topic that has provided over 12 years of stable employment. As a programmer or project manager, I've written or helped write plenty of systems based on free software. For example, as development manager for MessageLabs' anti-spam service for four years. This was a well-paid job which used free software almost exclusively (notably, spamassassin). We customised lots of free software to fit our employer's requirements, and contributed any improvements back to the free project. The way to make money from free software is to find an employer who wants something custom, bespoke, written for them. You then take a free software package as your starting point, write the customisations, get paid, and release it. Customisations fit into two categories: * Configuration * Improvements Configuration is generally of no interest to the wider public and is not usually covered by GPL-like licences, ergo does not usually require open source release. Improvements are covered usually by GPL and similar, and, if the result is released to the public, the source code must be available to the public too. Releasing source code to the public can be a tricky argument to win with some employers, but they have to remember that for GPL code it is a legal duty, not something that can be opted out of. The trick to make things easier is to keep the programming generic, and add specific company stuff in the configuration. Several companies I've worked for have also insisted that all GPL upstream releases must be made in the individual names of the programmers, instead of the name of the company (MessageLabs, for example). -- Andrew Oakley -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.org/UKTeam/
