Re: [Fsuk-manchester] RMS on Swedish Pirate Party vs Free Software

[Pater Mann]

Chris Rogers wrote:
> The debate is well illustrated by the case of Pegasus Mail, which has always
> been a free download, although not Free or open source. David Harris, the
> author, has made his living for the last 15 years or so by selling manuals
> and support for the product, but has recently had to review his position
> because of his financial situation.

I am very sad to read of this. I used Pegasus in my early days on the
'Net and have always quite liked it. I agree that it would be very sad
if it disappeared. Thankfully, an update at the end of the open letter
says that David has already received a significant number of pledges
so hopefully he will be able to continue to develop it.

The simple fact is that it is very hard to make money from free
software. I remember when (GNU/)Linux first started making headway
outside universities. Almost overnight a host of support companies
were set up and then most of them disappeared again nearly as quickly.
One of the few to survive is Red Hat but, despite providing very
extensive value-add (support, services, training, etc.) and being one
of the few distributions that most commercial software is certified to
work with, they too have struggled. Like the software, support is
freely available online so it is only companies who want the comfort
factor of dealing with a commercial organisation that are prepared to
pay for it.

patermann