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A comment on Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux by yellowapple on Thursday February 19, 2015 @04:53PM (#9077357)
To be honest, I don't see that as too much of a problem; Ardour, for example, is free-as-in-speech and technically free-as-in-beer (since you don't have to buy Ardour to get the source code and compile it yourself, and it is indeed available as a package for most distros), but still only provides binary downloads via the website to users who pay for them. There are also plenty of distros - like RHEL and SUSE - that are only officially available in their paid-for versions (though both of those have corresponding free-as-in-beer development/testing versions - Fedora and openSUSE, respectively - and CentOS also exists as a theoretically-drop-in RHEL replacement).

Software has to be monetized somehow. SUSE and RHEL and Oracle Linux are monetized by subscriptions to support contracts. Slackware is monetized by sales of double-sided DVDs. Ubuntu is monetized by a mix of support contracts and begging for donations on the download page. OpenBSD is monetized by a a mix of donations and merchandise sales (including install CD packs and t-shirts and such). I'm not one to believe that ElementaryOS is any more or less sinful than any of those examples.

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Re:Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux by cheald on Thursday February 19, 2015 @05:09PM (#9077438)
I don't have any problem with monetizing FOSS - I think it's awesome, in fact. I have a ton of respect for RedHat and their business model. Ardour's model is great, too - the product is free, but we'll sell you convenience. It's entirely possible to have a saleable product coexist with a FOSS license.

My issue with the eOS team wasn't that they said "we want to make money for this", but that they accused their users of being cheats for not paying them for the software, the vast majority of which they didn't write or maintain. I want OSS devs making money. Heck, I want the eOS guys making money, if they're making a product that people like and want to see continued. But their tack was pretty amazingly hypocritical.

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