Steve Litt <slitt@???> wrote:

> I'm all for corporations making money. I get paid, why shouldn't they?

Indeed. I find it "interesting" to hear some people suggesting they shouldn't have to pay for anything - and think that if anyone suggested they shouldn't get paid for whatever they do/produce then they might have a different view !
Also bear in mind that a lot of what is "free" is only free and there because "someone else" actually paid for it - just look at how many of the major projects are led/staffed by people employed by various technology companies to produce the "free" stuff.

Eg, while we may deride RH (especially over SystemD), it's true that their paying customers do indirectly pay for some of the stuff we use for "free". I personally know someone employed by them to work on virtualisation - IIRC he works on improvements to things like Qemu.

Of course, we know that a lot of people work on this in their own time - but we assume that they are still either employed, or getting a pension, or getting some other form of support in order to pay the bills, keep a roof over their head, and put food on the table.

> But what if I owned a bicycle shop, and furnished bicycle thieves
> with bolt cutters and five bucks for every bike they boosted, so that
> the recently ripped off would buy a new bike from my shop? That's
> basically what Redhat's doing: Destroying Linux to make their training
> and consulting more valuable.

That does seem a good analogy.