Redhat sells service contracts. Making the products it services
better increases the profits from those contracts because it doesnt have to
spend money to send employees to fix issues.
Precisely. They
still give their improvements [to Linux] away for nothing with no hope of
return; nobody is forced to buy a service contract.
Windows
antivirus companies that give away a version usually have a paid version that
either has extras or no nag screens they hope to sell.
I have one
of the free anti-windwos-virus programs but have never had a nag screen or
advertising. It has been given away with no hope of return. If I buy another
version with more features or no nag screens then that is still no return on the
free version - it is return on the investment of providing those extra features
or no nag screen. This is unlike shareware which was "given away for free" but
with the expectation that anyone who continued to use it after a trial period
then actually paid something for it and so there is hope of [direct]
return.
Or to put it another way they are using their free product as
advertisement for something else; such advertisement often being cheaper than
placing an ad somewhere else.
Which is why I discriminate between direct and
indirect return: there is absolutely no hope of direct financial return (adverts
have no hope of any direct return) but there is indirect return which can
possibly be quantified in terms of money.
GPL is an excellent example of a
licence where the return is non-financial which is why people just don't get it:
I am giving you my research, development and work for nothing, all you have to
do in return is to give it, and any amendments you may make, away as well.
The op made no distinction between direct and indirect return as they
probably had no thought other than direct financial return and can't see the
benefits of indirect returns. If there is no hope of any return whatsoever it
would not be done - there is the return of satisfaction to the programmer for
writing a piece of code which is unquantifiable in financial returns. Before you
cite something like slaves or prisoners doing mindless useless tasks (eg filling
a bucket of water from a vat and emptying it into back into the vat) the return
there is the knowledge of the one forcing the excution of the task that it is
futile and a total waste of time for those doing it. There is a return for all
things done. Not all motivation is [direct] financial! [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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