Free vs. Prop. Software. Is free financially viable?

[tuxfan]

Only with free software, we can even attempt to work without duplication, and this in itself should take us places.

True. Very noble and great for the society in general. But the question here is about how I will earn money by giving out freedomware. Forget about what others do. Show me how I will earn money out of my application.

 

[icecoolz]

GNUrag:

Struts was just an example of a framework as requested by tuxfan. If you need open source frameworks for desktop based application I can provide those too. I havent really looked into them as I dont need them.

Any website runs applications. so how can you say that the desktop applications form a majority ? The web browser is a single interface to all these applications but they are applications stiil so I dont think Struts can be deamed that limited in its usefulness. U might also wanna check out Oracle's solution called ADF (Active Data Framework) which uses complete wizards and drag and drop to create applications for the web and everything is completely customizable. Ofcourse its not open source since its an Oracle solution but then ADF is based on struts. Give it a try its a sinch to use. Once again I just give it as an example.


Frameworks were never intended for customer lock down purposes. I have always maintained that! If it uses a framework to build its own application then I can add new components to it but I cannot modify the exisiting components in case of a proprietary solution. So extensibility is available and also reusability but not maintainability. I can keep harping on about frameworks which I seem to be doing neways!! lol!

 

[GNUrag]

No no no.... What i was pointing out was that Web Application Frameworks dont form a majority.... its the programs like media players and the like (the whole lot of tools bundled with KDE for example) that form a majority.... and as far as i know about Struts, its a Web Application framework.....

If you know about some such frameworks for Desktop applications then do let me know. I am not aware of them...

 

[DKant]

Back to spoil the thread lol

Neway, so, as GNURag/tuxfan said some posts ago - "after 5 pages we come back to square one". WOW! We have, and so have I. I was sitting pretty smug thinking about MLM and about filling the loopholes in it when I read STallman's book...and I realized MLM itself was one big HOLE!!!

MLM violates the basic definition of freedom (according to Stallman) : "that I can modify freedomware without giving any kind of royalty to the original author/taking any kind of permission from him." Well MLM seemed forgotten anyway, but if any1 was trying to remember it..well FORGET IT! It was flawed.

And we still don't have any answers on the "small-time programmer's financial crunch" front.

(Don't know anything about frameworks so I'm keeping my mouth shut on it. )

 

[tuxfan]

MLM violates the basic definition of freedom (according to Stallman)

True. MLM doesn't comple with Stallman's ideas. But then even Stallman's idea of free software looks flawed to me. That is why I am trying to find out some alternative.

And we still don't have any answers on the "small-time programmer's financial crunch" front.