I have soon a PhD in computer tech related subject, program for living, and am a lot younger than the judge, and if you ask me if Mozilla makes a search engine I would say I have no idea, they've made a lot of stuff. And if you asked me how Google's SEM tools work I would ask wtf is SEM.
jaaval
joined 1 year ago
The problem is, free software model is actually difficult to make profit with. Red hat has long been touted as the prime example of how to do it, by selling service and support instead of software, and even they try to limit the customers' freedom as much as possible now. Turns out a lot of people don't need support. And the better the software the less support is needed.
I struggle to see a way to make a game engine available so that it's free software and the customers can just take it if they don't like your pricing policy, but still make money from developing it. Or even break even. What would the engine developers sell? What would the game developers sell if the code could just be redistributed for free?
I'm honestly a bit divided on this. Like yes, freedom is great, but the Apple app monopoly, for all its faults, does one good thing and it's the fact that all the software is easily available in one place and I am not forced to install multiple app stores to search trough to find what I'm looking for. It turns out that while I like to tinker with personalized Linux installs on my computers, on my phone I just want it to work as quickly and easily as possible without having to figure things out.
I would like an easier way to compile your own app packages for the phone though.