From: johnsonm@lars.acc-admin.stolaf.edu (Michael K. Johnson)
Subject: Re: MONEY + Linux
Organization: St. Olaf College; Northfield, MN  USA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 20:31:36 GMT


In article <1992Dec17.033917.2963@midway.uchicago.edu> goer@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:

   Can Linux go on forever without some commercial support?  I mean,

No.  Nor would it go on forever /with/ commercial support.  Linux is
not immortal.  But I imagine that was not what you meant by that
question...  Many of us who work on linux do so, not with any thought
of remuneration, but because it is interesting and rewarding in and of
itself.  I did not write the improved printer driver, for instance,
because someone paid me for the many hours I spent, but because I
learned from it.  And now a few people are having problems with it,
and I will put as much effort as necessary in to resolving their
problems.  I have seen this attitude with most people writing for
Linux.  It is precisely /not/ commercial -- It is better.

In case you think that this is silly ideological muttering, consider
this:  For many months, people have been telling the newsgroup and the
mailing list /why/ they dumped their commercial OS's.  If you have
read those posts, you will notice one /very common/ reponse:  BETTER
SUPPORT.  This is coming from people have have been using different
flavors of commercial OS's for years, as well as relative newcomers.

If you /really/ want to pay for commercial support, it is my
understanding (may be flawed, if it is /someone/ please correct me)
that cygnus support is considering supporting or does support.  I know
that there are other people who also offer commercial support for
linux, and it is certainly better than the "service plans" you can buy
from commercial vendors, in many respects.  One is that the person
providing the support can actually do something about bugs...

   it's hard to see anything as useful that's maintained by folks that
   aren't doing it for a living - at least the size of a 386 UNIX
   implementation.  Is there some way that a useful remuneration path
   can be arranged.  E.g. could universities be site-licensed, thereby
   gaining the right to have attention paid to their bugs and config-
   uration problems, and to receive regular updates?

This is simply not needed.  It might seem like it might be needed to
someone who does not understand the ethic under which Linux is being
developed, but "The proof of the pudding is in the eating", and the
eating has proven the pudding well.  Empirically, look at what has
happened.  A large group of people has grown up to support each other
(and flame each other from time to time ;-) and in one year of
widespread use, Linux has become one of the premium OS's to put on
your 386.  Compare that with, say, coherent, which has existed for,
oh, maybe 6 years now?  Something like that...  It has been sold and
supported commercially, but comes from the same cloning background as
Linux.  Which one works better?  You be the judge.

   This might seem to come out of the blue to people on this list, but
   many, many people won't touch Linux because they don't see it as
   "going anywhere" except into an endless chain of mixed expert and
   amateurish accretions that can't possibly be maintained properly.

I don't feel a need to cater to people who are stubbernly unwilling to
challenge their own beliefs about what software can be "going
anywhere".  If people won't beleive that free software can survive,
why do we need to cater to thier commercial delusions?  Let them eat
cake... ;-)

As far as proper maintainence:  Linus has been better maintained than
most commercial source code I have seen.  As my mother always says,
"Actions speak louder than words."  It is very easy to be skeptical
about Linux being maintained, in theory, but when you look at what
really happens, it does work.  If people will rail against facts, I
have no psycological need to convert them -- they will likely just
poison the air in this newsgroup.

I have responded in c.o.l instead of by mail, because I feel that this
comes up often enough to point out the problems with this argument...

One other thing, tangentially related to this posting:

I have seen a distressing number of people who assume that the purpose
of Linux is to take over the world.  If people read Linus's postins on
the subject, and those of the other kernel hackers who have
contributed, they will find that this is simply not the purpose of
Linux.  This purpose is presumed by others, seemingly automatically
assumed from the mere existence of a *nix clone.

LINUX WILL NEVER DOMINATE THE PC MARKET.  This is a statement which is
almost assuredly true, despite Linux's superiority to things like DOS.
Does it bother me?  No.  Why should we act like the 13th century
crusaders?  Let's be civilized.  For those who wish to escape DOS, and
escape has been provideed.  for those that don't, don't drag them into
our party unwilling:  it only sullies the air.

Hope this is useful to some, at least...

michaelkjohnson