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The immediate fate of MySQL in the
Oracle Sun takeover has to be of great interest to anyone with a
significant stake in the TurboCASH project, or any Open Source
project for that matter. Here is a very good article by Dustin Marks
on the Economic
realities of Open Source.
I want to take Dustin up on this
statement of his. "As an end user of an open source
product, I obviously prefer no strings attached and no license fee
required. However, as a realist and as someone who is paid for at
least some of his own software development, I do understand the
desire and even the need for those who contribute significantly to
open source to be compensated by those who use that open source."
I don't agree with
Dustin. As an end user in a Open Source project, I regard it as my
right to get free software. This is what makes Open Source attractive
to me. I describe how we deal with development in the TurboCASH
Accounting project.
As of Dec 2009, around 10 people work
on producing the core TurboCASH Accounting program. Around 30
are involved in various localizations and hundreds of casual
contributors put efforts into developing the software. The majority
of the core contributors are one man businesses, and contribute their
services voluntarily.
We encourage developers, integrators
and accountants to make a career supporting TurboCASH. By
using the small contributions from many hands we are able to bind
together a working community, that produces a superior product. We
expect each contributor to be financially self sufficient. Each
contributor in each territory finds her way of making the project pay
for her input. For example me, Philip Copeman, I work full time on
TurboCASH. I make my money from selling CDs, Documentation,
training and introducing TurboCASH users to business
opportunities. Other contributors make their livings in other
territories. What makes us such a dangerous group of individuals is
that this methodology makes for a better program to be delivered at a
price that simply cannot be beaten (Free!).
This available pool of resources does
not mean that you can arrive at the project and start demanding free
developments that you think will improve your experience. In fact,
short of putting up your own development efforts or inserting cash
into the system, you are unlikely to move the project off its current
course.
We have a simple maxim in the Open
Source business:
Information is Free
Service is Not
Contributions are priceless.
This means effectively that if you want
TurboCASH exactly as it is – you get it free. What something
changed, it is going to cost you , either your own efforts or payment
to someone that will develop for you.
The GPL licence takes this one step
further. If you do want to develop the software, then we have one
further proviso, that you turn over all developments to us in source
code and we have the option of distributing these developments to the
TurboCASH community. This means that the first person pays and
everyone else gets it for free. Effectively what happen sin the real
world is that we get a constant flow of voluntary improvements that
get shared by everyone.
Does this sound like we are forcing you
to pay for the program? Not at all. You are free to use the software
at no charge, but if you are going to make changes, then we ask you
to acknowledge the Millions of dollars contributions that have come
before you and to make sure that any modifications add to the code
base.
Why are there commercial plugins and a
licence for Multi user software? We live in a real world economy this
is not a Church. In certain circumstances, we understand that there
is a need for a charge. Typically this is where other commercial
software is involved. For example if you are happy to pay bank fees
to a bank to use their software, you should be happy to pay fro a
plugin that imports this data into TurboCASH. For example
import and export to another Open Source product, like Open Office,
is free. In the case of the multi user licence, this is to cover the
cost of testing and
integrating each release into the many
network environments out there. This is a cost of $ 100 per year.
This is a voluntary payment. Users who do not want to pay this can
simply download the code and compile an test the multi user system
themselves.
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