Why Making Money from Free Software Matters

“Free software began as a political movement: its central aim
was – and remains – the propagation of freedom. Later,
it became a development methodology too, largely at the hands of
Linus, whose geographical isolation in Finland forced him to
develop ways of using the Internet to coordinate a new kind of
massive, but decentralised, global collaboration. Later still, free
software also became a way of making serious money –
something that Stallman has repeatedly said he is quite happy with,
contrary to much FUD claiming otherwise.

“Few would deny the importance of the first two aspects of free
software – as an ideology and as a methodology – but
the future impact of its business model is probably
under-appreciated. And yet in its own way, that aspect is just as
revolutionary as the other two.

“Businesses based around free software have to address a central
conundrum: how is it possible to make money from something that by
definition is freely available? Richard Stallman himself provided
an example of how that might be done, when he started selling GNU
Emacs on tapes – at $150 a time. This meant he was
financially independent during the early days of the GNU project
– a crucial development for him, as he told me in 1999:”

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