Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 1st Feb 2008 20:56 UTC, submitted by irbis
"At a recent Australian Linux conference, Sam Varghese reported that two Debian developers pointed out that the Debian Project needs more corporate support for 'men, money and machines' to advance the operating system. They're right. It does. They also pointed out that many companies, such as HP, IBM, Silicon Graphics and Google, either use Debian Linux internally, or actually incorporate it into products. For example, HP uses Debian 'Etch' 4.0 in its new t5735 thin-client device. Right again. Debian, either directly or through related Linux distributions such as Xandros, is used both by Linux enthusiasts and Fortune 500 companies. Of course, you couldn't prove that by the vast majority of Debian developers who never see a thin dime from their Debian work. Or, I should add, get access to new hardware, travel expenses to Debian developer conferences and so on."
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Member since:
2005-07-06
That's not the hard part. Convincing people to use GPLed stuff has never been too much of a hassle in many cases. I've even even worked at companies where we released inhouse code under GPL and to allow developers to spend work time fixing bugs and submitting patches in GPL products we use.
The hard part is to convince them to donate money. There is simply no business case for it.