[PLUG] "who pays these people" [for open-source software]?

[Kyle Accardi]

Greg Long wrote:
> I found an interesting article, which does raise, and essentially answer
> a good question for current and future software engineers like myself.
> 
> http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/01/11/19/011119opsource.xml
> 
> Even considering the current recession, which is perhaps at its worst in
> the IT field, I still see (just as an example) a lot of kids buying PS2
> and gameboy games and countless products designed with tons of code.
> There will surely still be the need for a lot of custom and other
> development.


Thank the GPL.  Folks at big companies that adopt GNU/Linux have a 
legal obligation (and most of them know it) to contribute back.  They 
pay good money for  highly-skilled (and some not-so-skilled) 
programmers to develop products that make use of OSS.

The big companies that "get it" use this to leverage hipness, not to 
mention shareholder-happiness.  Some lawyers are not so comfortable 
with the GPL and if they work for a large enough company, create 
variations of the license which are generally acceptable.

Considering the alternatives, OSS is an automatic win for many 
companies.  Bottom line: they need people that know Linux.

--
Kyle Accardi