Re: [Fsfe-uk] Funding Open Source

[Alex Hudson]

On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 08:36, ian wrote:
> > It seems
> > fairly clear to me that Scribus could be commercially viable, but of
> > course building a business around free software development is tricky in
> > the very least (many, myself included, think it impossible).
> 
> I hope not because if it is my business plan is down the swanee :-)
> Actually, I think you have to link things together.

Yeah, I think we're probably agreeing here. My point was that I don't
think it's possible to sit working on a piece of free software you want
to work on and get paid for it - there obviously will be examples where
that is the case, but I don't think it could be thought of as a business
model.

If you want to work on free software and get paid, the most obvious way
is to ask people to pay you to extend software they use, either
functionally or working on stability or something. But, you probably
don't get to work on Scribus.

One of the other alternatives is to setup a company based around selling
Scribus. This time you probably do get to keep working on Scribus, but
then you have all sorts of other pesky stuff to deal with - lots of
customers, support, etc...

> The incentive to use the GPL is that fact you can save money by using
> other people's work as a starting point. 

Well, the same goes for all other free software licences too, pretty
much (modulo whatever the thing you're starting from is licenced under).

> > Reverse engineering is protected under the European Copyright Convention
> > for the furthering of interoperability. Technically, you should be okay.
> > Practically, you could probably expect your day in court.
> 
> If the court actions keep failing they will stop as it will simply cost
> the plaintive money.

Yeah. I don't know to what extent this has already been litigated - I
suspect not a great deal, so any court case on this would probably be
fairly lengthy. The "day in court" thing I alluded to was more about the
confusion Paul originally raised, about what the law allows and then
what can be overridden by EULAs. I guess many here would hope that EULAs
don't count for an awful lot, and that the right to reverse engineer is
protectable. But, these days, who knows?

Cheers,

Alex.