Open Source vs. Commercial Software

[FoulDragon at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/24/2005 9:42:09 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
derek at gnue.org writes:
>
>When someone starts with Open/Free Software vs Commercial Software, it 
>isn't even worth exchanging dialog with them.  It is clear from that 

It's hard to find a clear way to divide the market, that everyone can agree 
on.  We know that Windows XP is obviously licenced differently than FreeBSD, 
but there are so many nuances in between that a line's hard to draw.  Remember 
the old Qt licence fiasco?  In addition, a lot of words are overloaded or not 
obvious in meaning to the general public.  Free, for example, could mean 
"beer-free", "speech-free", or "free-with-a-limit".  IMO, the only truly speech-free 
licence is public-domain, everything else is free-with-a-catch.

I think we can agree, the vast majority of commercially sold packages, where 
you're buying a licence, are not libre.  A few are-- like many web apps, which 
must be customized to the site

In general, people paying for libre software are buying "accessories" to the 
software, like CDs, support contracts, and books.  Some pay for custom 
development, or donate like a charity to the developers.

So a reasonable way to divide the market is to compare commercially-sold 
software (typically not libre, licences sold) versus free-and-open-source software 
(libre, licences given away)