Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : Gerry Quinn Date : Wed Aug 24 2005 12:59 pm In article , vesa.karvonen@cs.helsinki.fi says... > Randy Howard wrote: > [...] > > In the meantime, you'll be using commercial software. Even the > > 'best of breed' open source apps have a lot of bizarre little > > problems. Yes, commercial apps have problems too, but you don't > > have to spend three days tracking through release notes, CVS, > > wikis and what not figuring out what a 'valid bug report' looks > > like, you can just pick up the phone and ask for help. > [...] > > (I spend a lot of time doing tech support for friends and > > relatives. *sigh*) > > Have you considered building a business to provide tech support for > selected open source/free software? > > I find it a bit silly to complain about lack of documentation for > something that is free. Stop wasting your life complaining and do > something to improve the situation. Write the documentation that you > wanted yesterday and sell it. I would take the view that home users of open source software are self- selected as not wanting to pay for software or similar goods, so they are intrinsically a poor quality market. By and large, there is unlikely to be much value in developing for them, be it software or documentation. I suppose printed books might be an exception, as these will somehow be placed in a different category. - Gerry Quinn .