stephan beal wrote:
This is a bit off topic, so feel free to tap Delete now, but i think everyone who uses and writes Free/Open Source Software should take a look at this:
http://64.71.152.24/index.html
i post it here mainly because of the number of "why won't you answer my question!?!?!" posts, and related immature and unappreciative behaviour which so often pops up here on this list. Reading that page, and the "background" page for that page:
http://64.71.152.24/original.html
might imbue some appreciation from the non-developers out there who so often DEMAND, without so much as a please or thank you, that FOSS developers solve the users' problems. It will certainly draw some sympathy from fellow FOSS developers who, like Paul, pay for domains and bandwidth out of their own pockets, and offer free support on their own time.
:)
That is one side of the story that has many (about 43,900) echoes on the web. Here are some: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15620 http://mjg59.livejournal.com/65927.html http://www.mepis.org/node/10965 http://freshmeat.net/projects/fnk/ http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=242077 etc. This story really has to be on OT list. His business model wasn't successful and now the problem is GPL, users and everything else. The public answer wasn't a good move for many reasons, but with some good business adviser cipherfunk.org can be back with financially happy him, adviser, bank and Ubuntu/Mepis users. Companies made fortune with GPL-ed code so GPL isn't that bad. Obviously asking for donations didn't work very well, or didn't work the way he asked, but there is a plenty examples that seems to work. -- Regards, Rajko.