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→Does free software affects survival of a company and creates unemployment?: add answer from free software camp 2020 matrix discussions
Sahilister (talk | contribs) (add "Does free software affects survival of a company and creates unemployment?" question) |
Sahilister (talk | contribs) (→Does free software affects survival of a company and creates unemployment?: add answer from free software camp 2020 matrix discussions) |
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“I want to ask you why that question is worth asking. First there are many people who don't have to make money. Importantly even if a person has to make a living, he doesn't have to make a living from everything he does. Lots of people develop free software in their free time and there are people who have to make a living, and they do make a living. To jump from, this person is not rich and therefore has to work, to, this person can't write free software because he is not paid to write it, is an error. There are over a million contributors to free software, a substantial fraction is getting paid and a majority are volunteers. I suspect the reason people bring up this question of economics as a secondary detail is because they are laboring under the misconception that the free software community is impossible, unless the developers are getting paid.” | “I want to ask you why that question is worth asking. First there are many people who don't have to make money. Importantly even if a person has to make a living, he doesn't have to make a living from everything he does. Lots of people develop free software in their free time and there are people who have to make a living, and they do make a living. To jump from, this person is not rich and therefore has to work, to, this person can't write free software because he is not paid to write it, is an error. There are over a million contributors to free software, a substantial fraction is getting paid and a majority are volunteers. I suspect the reason people bring up this question of economics as a secondary detail is because they are laboring under the misconception that the free software community is impossible, unless the developers are getting paid.” | ||
==Does free software | ==Does free software affect survival of a company and creates unemployment?== | ||
''Every company exists in doing different software. Their survival depends on the profit they make when they sell it, but when free software replaces it, it affects the survival of the company and creates unemployment?'' | |||
I would argue that today the product offering is not just the software but also the support and assurances the company making the software can provide its clients. Corporate value stability and support. Most corporate don't mind spending money on software if they can get better support and stability. In fact most free software companies make money by providing paid customer support and additional features their clients (which are usually other companies) might need. | |||
A software that you release under free/libre license does not make it unsalable. It's a misconception. A software that you develop can be easily customized and deployed by your company since you have the expertise yourself. If it is a free software program, the sale factor will depend on marketing it, expertise and customization for the client's use case you can claim. If it is a free software service you host and sell the access to easily use it and customization. In both cases, there is the option to charge to customize an existing free software or your own software to your client's workflow. If you look at the jobs in software field, a huge majority are for creating custom software or private software, i.e. there is only one maker for that software, and they pay for the development fully. This will not be affected by free software at all. | |||
Free software cannot replace all software jobs. Now coming to a small percentage of software jobs replaced by free software. It actually opens up more opportunities for local employment as more people can now offer support and customization. So it is good for local economy. The opportunities increase to all under free software, unless you consider a monopoly which constricts growth of others by accumulating resources and access locking it down as the only growth path. If you look at the Janayugom migration to Free Software, earlier they were paying only Adobe, now a local company provided migration services (some of them are in this group). So it was also new jobs. Janayugom newspaper switched to 100% Free Software for publishing from Adobe PageMaker to Scribus. If Free Software was not an option, these companies would be charging much higher price for all their products. | |||
If two companies A and B make the same kind of software and if A's product becomes successful and because of that the B goes bankrupt can you blame A for that? People make money from free software so it really doesn't create unemployment. | |||
==How do I start contributing to FOSS?== | ==How do I start contributing to FOSS?== | ||