Re: The GNU Philosophy: How practical is it?

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   If you were to think of making money writing free software apps
   then would you be able to earn? Ok, lets assume I sell a copy to
   you and you pay me. I assume or at least hope that someone else
   will buy a copy from me in the future. But "you" can distribute the
   copy to others free of charge! My business wud fail! Because people
   are not buying it from me anymore.

Take a look at RedHat, or G10code as counter examples of why the above
is not true.  There are many other such examples as well.

   This post is not about proprietary software; it is about "earning
   money". Of course there are other ways of earning money if you are
   serious about thinking 'free software'. For e.g. you could go
   around fixing or supporting free software apps for other people -
   adding more features or removing them; you could do this service
   for a decent wage.

That is how the software business works, it is very seldom that you
end up writting something new, you maintain and support things as most
of the work that you do.  Not even the big propietery companies
survive on just charhing for copies.