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Sign of the times for OpenSource software?

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IainB:
I happened to be checking up on the current state of Winguide/"The Guide" (a PIM that I have long been interested in), which seems to have stopped development at version 2.0 in 2008.
On the discussion forum here, there was a pointed comment. I guess I feel much the same way about it.

Renegade:
The way I look at it, I see the general lack of business model for most developers as the biggest problem. Some OS software has a good business model, and is well supported.

Money keeps interest.

40hz:
It's generally not wise to rely on completely free of charge software from small or unknown developers for mission critical use.

I don't think something also being open source software has anything to do with it.

Of course Microsoft (and others) would very much like people to mentally equate the term "open source" with words such as: inferior, unreliable, infringing, hobbyist, infected, illegal, unstable, and unsupported.

And I think Joel Fannin's semi-snarky comment shows just how effectively they've colored many people's attitude towards "open source" in general.

As Renegade implies in his earlier post, for most software projects, "completely free of charge" is not a good model for long term sustainability. As many successful F/OSS developers have already realized. Not all open source software is made available free of charge. The FSF actively encourages F/OSS developers to charge money for their work. FSF has repeatedly stated that a price tag is not incompatible with the GPL.

Open Source is a product development methodology and philosophy - not a business model.
 :)

mahesh2k:
Money is not everything for many people. When I see GNU and Open Source community on diaspora, I see how they are motivated for their contribs on sourceforge and github. It's not about money for them. It doesn't matter how regular software is updated, as long it is safe and functioning as you are expecting. I have seen many paid software developers retiring their software, changing directions and ceasing development, nobody talks about that. People who want to get things done and are likely to pay just switch to another provider.

Capitalism has successfully destroyed mindset of people to such extent, people will not hesitate to charge for almost everything they do in life. This not only destroys creativity but also makes the people at the top thinking about monopoly.  Some people deserve to be manipulated by the people at top and some people deserve to find their freedom, whatever and wherever it  exists.

Tuxman:
The more reliability you want, the higher is your urge to pay for software you use. You have the choice between free and quality. Free software coders can never have enough budget to investigate new ways to reach paid software's quality.

One neat exception is, maybe, FreeBSD as Apple puts a lot of effort and money into it.

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