Re: [Fsuk-manchester] RMS on Swedish Pirate Party vs Free Software

[Tim Dobson]

Pater Mann wrote:
> The simple fact is that it is very hard to make money from free
> software. 

Teehee. Not in my experience.

Things I've done in the last five years:

* Webdesign a couple of years back:

Zencart for a site wanting a shop
Wordpress for a band wanting a website

* System administration of virtualised webhosting cluster
Xen, centos & debian used.
Usually install Apache, PHP, MySQL for the developers to play with
sensible-editor also recommended for editing config files

* Improving systems for company who install PBX systems
Asterisk used for PBX running on Ubuntu 8.04
Zimbra mail accounts resold
Request Tracker, SugarCRM, Mediawiki, Nagios etc. used internally
(we have written *another* Asterisk UI which we will shortly be 
releasing as free software and we are paid to write new features into it)

So for the small guy trying to make money from IT in a land where large 
companies rule, things are looking good.

And larger operrations like Red Hat aren't finding things *that* tough;
http://www.reuters.com/article/AIRDEF/idUSN2421958220090624

"Software company Red Hat Inc (RHT.N) reported a 7 percent rise in 
quarterly profit onWednesday[sic], bucking an industry trend of 
declining earnings, as margins widened under the scrutiny of its 
cost-conscious CEO." (24th June 09)

Cheers,

Tim