| ▲ | john_strinlai 3 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||
>So yes, there has been plenty of thought, scrutiny, improvements, etc. 40 years of it in fact. what percent of businesses follow the FSF freedoms and turn a profit? i would love it if i could get all my games for free, and legally give additional copies to all my students, family, and friends. but the developers pumping out those games probably want to see some sort of return more substantial than whatever trickles into their ko-fi account. they'll just stop developing games and go into CRM software or whatever. | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | singpolyma3 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
I don't see how "what percent" is the right metric. There are hundreds of such companies (I work for one) but it's a small percentage due to other factors (mainly it not being the default way most founders think about these things) | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | figmert 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||
Not really my point. My point is more that you suggested no one has thought about this, but yes, they have. To answer your question, there have been plenty of business who have created and published free software (albeit plenty have later closed them). Notable examples are Databricks, Hashicorp, Mongodb, RedHat. Sure they've built a moat on top of their free software, but they have (or had) free software regardless. | |||||||||||||||||
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