"Charles A. Reynolds" wrote:
>
> 1. Can somebody name an open source operating system without the word
> LINUX in it?
*bsd
FreeDos
>
> After reading the article in more detail I do not believe that the author
> understands Open
> Source as I do. Does IBM ship its Mainframes with proprietary information?
> No. Does SUN
> Microsystems ship all of its proprietary information with each system? No.
> Does Oracle ship
> systems with proprietary information? No. These are some of the most
> profitable and stable
> companies in America. Why?
I'm confused. The last time I checked, OS390, Solaris and Oracle are
all proprietary, copyrighted, and patented.
>
> Does just the fact that an application comes with source make it an Open
> Source Software? I was
> under the impression that open source meant collaboration with the community
> at large.
No. I have seen apps (and written a few) that come with source code,
but are not open source. Solaris source code is available, but it
is not open source. There are applications that come with source code
that are open source. Everything I write now is open source, but I
am not collaborating with anyone.
> Can any IT manager justify spending resources to enrich the community at
> large at the expense
> of the companies objective? No.
>
> Why is the open source community adverse to the notion of profit? How do I
> make money sitting
> at home pounding code for somebody else to use at will? Please tell me how
> I am to make money
> this way.!#$%^&*(
>
> Call it consulting or licensing all companies must charge fees. What makes
> one model better than
> the other?
The large electric company I eluded to earlier has support contracts
with some of the open source vendors. MySQL is a commercial open
source product, and they have a contract with MySQL to support every
box with MySQL installed. They have a couple other commercial
support contracts as well - with the publisher of the OSS.
> Please forgive me for going on but I have personal experience with software
> "consultants" that
> would prefer to see Microsoft torn down because they have a "monopoly" only
> to turn around and
> use their position with a software vendor to try and destroy competition
> (predatory practices).
>
> Charles Reynolds
> "Drive fast and take chances"
> /\
>
> P.S. This is not a flame on the information source. I would just like to
> try and understand where
> I am to make some money in supporting OSS.
Support contracts. Look at Sun - Solaris (8 cpu and under) is free
for commercial use. Sun makes their money supporting their hardware
(as well as in sales).
A year ago, a Blue financial organization prohibited the use of Perl
on Unix because there was no support contract for it. ActivePerl was
allowed for their NT systems because ActiveState provides a support
contract for it.
ActiveState is a private corporation with 50 employees and has
been in business for over 5 years, and they claim to be: "a
leader in the open source movement . . ."
I hope my example show how open source is profitable.
Regards,
George
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