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Because I my income depends on selling services around software development.
I used to be 100% open source zealot, until I had to start earning my own money, and discovered how hard it is to create any type of business around open source.
When I see people blindly defending open source, for me it always comes across as someone that wants everything for free, and does not earn its money selling software, so it is easy to state that everything should be free.
How do you pay your bills?
Open source is economically the best option for companies whose primary business is NOT to sell software. Any business whose products incorporate software, but the product itself is not the software per se, has a great business case to use open source.
Hence open source Android for businesses which sell phones, not apps.
Hence Samsung:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/257063/samsung_gets_serious_about_li...
http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-linux-foundation-apple-2012-...
Hence Toyota:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2011/07/toy...
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/72867.html
Hence the scientific projects such as the Large Hadron Collider:
http://www.internetnews.com/skerner/2008/09/large-hadron-collider--...
Hence the OIN community:
http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/licensees.php
Hence Google:
http://code.google.com/opensource/projects.html
These companies and institutions all collaborate to invest in open source software, to the benefit of all of them.
This is how the bills are paid.
Edited 2012-09-16 12:17 UTC
Sure, why not ?
Here is an example:
Working at an hosting provider you probably rely on open source for pretty much all your business needs.
You might not sell software, but you develop software for automation or services.
You can also replace hosting provider with some company like: Amazon or Ebay or whatever.





Member since:
2005-07-08
Are you a software developer just selling services on top of only free software to both domestic and enterprise customers?
How do you pay your bills?