[License-discuss] we need a new license for earning money

[Pirmin Braun]

Am Mon, 23 Sep 2013 21:52:47 +0100
schrieb Cinly Ooi <cinly.ooi at gmail.com> :

> 
> > Then have you ever thought about the allowed means of making money from
> > Open Source? Like selling copies? Strictly speaking, this is also a
> > discrimination: Someone having a slow internet connection or little
> > knowledge of how to build a product from the sources and having no friends
> > that can help is forced to pay money. Same with professional services:
> > companies not having the IT stuff to do it inhouse are discriminated! They
> > have to hire Open Source contractors to help them.
> >
> >
> How does this rant advance your position?

let's try to explain with another rant:
there is already some contradiction in the OSI defnition: "must not restrict anyone from making use of the program"
because if someone wants to make use but can't without help and this help is only offered for money, he's restricted.
Even asking for donation could be called a restriction of use, since the user might feel bad when using without paying.
Now it becomes comparable: a company with 20 employees and 6 concurrent named users
a) needs to buy professional services for 10000,-- EUR to get it in place and running (OSI compliant)
or
b) has to pay 900,-- EUR for usage but can handle it on their own (not OSI compliant)

What's worse: without other possibilities for income the programmer will benefit from programming software that can't be used without help.
Or to put it further, for earning money it doesn't make sense to develop user friendly Open Source software.

That's the situation, we got into. For 10 years we've been developing "IntarS" ERP under GPL and selling professional services. Now it's so evolved that companies can just checkout and use. And they do. No more professional services needed. In 1996 I quit my SAP career in favour of living the dream of developing Open Source ERP. It worked and we enabled others also to live their dream. Now is it time to just turn away from Open Source as proposed in most answers? Is it meant to be so or is there maybe a flaw in the design that could be adjusted?
 
This money thing really seems to be a problem; there is always the "free as in freedom not as in free beer" comparison, but it's misleading when you're not allowed to take money from the person who drinks your beer.
Taking money from a user who benefits from using the software shouldn't be considered a restriction of use.

Finally "discrimination": Distinguishing users by their income or revenue or other appropriate economical metrics is not discrimination. 

-- 
Pirmin Braun - IntarS Unternehmenssoftware GmbH - Am Hofbräuhaus 1 - 96450 Coburg
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