quote:
I always hear people say programmers don't work for free as an argument against open source.
I'm constantly amazed that people continue to use that argument;
1. Actually a large proportion of the people currently writing free software *are* volunteers working for free.
2. Companies such as Red Hat *are* paying people to work on free software.
The first answer to this question is Void's; that most code written is actually bespoke software tailored for particular companies' needs.
The other point relates to software that *is* produced for the purpose of being redistributable product, such as Linux, MySQL, KDE etc etc etc. Part of your question is "How/Why does, for example, the KDE project make money when the software is free?" The bottom line is that software needs to be written. Linux distributors need it so they can make money from their distributions, and end users need it because, well, they're going to be using it.
If you need a piece of software writing because you're either going to be using it or selling it on to others, it's in your interests to fund its development. For example, Red Hat and Mandrake pay people to work on KDE. So the KDE project gets paid to develop KDE; Red Hat gets paid by company X for their operating system and for support; company X gets a nice desktop environment and society gets the benefit of being able to use the fruits of this work. Everyone's happy.
Obviously when programmers are doing useful work they expect to be paid for it, but once that work is done there's no reason why there should be restrictions placed on who can use it. Writing a brilliant piece of software, that could be reproduced and restributed to anyone who wants a copy at no cost, and then restricting who can use it based on whether or not they have paid for it is just waste, pure and simple.
[ September 27, 2002: Message edited by: flap ]