http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/linux-the-big-misconceptions/3853

The Linux Desktop: Not Dead, Just Broken
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/The-Linux-Desktop-Not-Dead-Just-Broken-76199.html

The Linux Foundation exists to assist developer to company join ups as well.

Since you are a student don’t miss out on taking part in the google summer of code. Yes you do get paid for doing that. Can lead to full-time employment as a FOSS developer. The payment is both ways. The person mentoring you gets paid and you as the student gets paid. Not much but its money.

ssorbom there is a downside you most likely will have to be working on other peoples problems as your day job. Not your own.

ssorbom projects that do well long term are like Blender who runs a store and profits from it as well as donations. Or are company funded.

To get a decent wage does not require writing closed source software.

If your language is good you can make money writing books and user guides.

Lead developers of most projects that are successful a full-time job somewhere with someone who is using it.

Even if you are only paid by having FLOSS subsidize/assist your education, whatever you produce for FLOSS will be a good return on investment. There are so many millions of FLOSS developers that the throughput of just the students is amazing. For big projects, there should be a lead developer however, and it helps if he has a paying job. Many relevant projects are paid this way by employers valuing the daily production of programmer X by allowing him some hours to code FLOSS or to do research or whatever. It’s a diverse economy, FLOSS.

One of the advantages of teaching for me was that I could enjoy the science/maths/computers while teaching children. I was providing a valuable service to society while society provided me with the toys I needed to stay alive. I used to say when I was 5x years old that I was still 5 … decades old… Unlike other teachers who taught the same thing the same day for the last decade, I made a new plan every day. That way I never felt it was monotonous. Perhaps you could be a teacher or run your own business and hire people to do those tasks.

A code submission may help the project move faster, but it wont pay the lead developer’s rent or feed his kid…

There is a Libre audio editor called Ardour which solves this by saying that all donation money goes direcly to supporting the project developer, as opposed to, say, hiring other full time programmers to flesh out the system. The article I read on this project seems to indicate that a core of users who regularly use the code voluntarily pay a monthly fee to this developer to see that the project continues. Regular community support like that can work, but from what I have seen it seems rare. Now, I am a student, so any time I spend helping people with GNU\Linux is essentially free, but I dread the day I will have to earn a wage, as the idea of writing proprietary code as a business plan turns my stomach.

In fact you have not been around the wine community have you. Do you know what happens if we suspect someone has pirated something. Support is cut off.

The FOSS community itself is very anti-pirate.

Those also you are talking about fully pirate Windows before coming to Linux. They are Windows pirates first. They are not FOSS first normally. I have banned a few from the winehq channel for what you are talking about. Also they normally started on Windows doing this. Excuse to us in the wine channel we did this on Windows its fine to do it on Linux followed with you have no right to ban us for doing this.

Only to find out Wine is funded by a company that makes a closed source product so breaking license is an extremely offensive unless there is no other choice.

The correct name for those people most often is the Pirate Party and believe all information should be free its also a form Anarchism. FOSS its self is not Anarchism there is a formal style to its operations.

FOSS there is a respect for licenses. RMS never talks about breaking a license.

Mind you wine does not support running most cracks of closed source programs(only exceptions are where wine cannot be made run the copy protection yet mostly because the program detects wine and fails). Anyone found using a crack on a piece of software on wine that will legally activate in wine without it gets banned from receiving future support. There is no forgiveness ever. Its not 3 strikes you are out its 1 strike you are gone.

Thorsten Rahn in fact the funny thing is Wine developer will help people develop better copy protection to catch theifs. FOSS is really anti we will help you catch them. We hate them as much as you do.

Yes as support people we are willing to hand over ip’s with time to enforcement as well if the company request it of us. Most cases companies just deploy a bot in the wine channel and check out what the people who got banned said to see if its their product. We take no offence to this. Don’t do the crime if you don’t want todo the time.

This is the same for most other FOSS projects because if they break your license they will break ours. Yes part of Linux support contracts from SUSE and Redhat is a clause you do not break licenses of anyone’s or you void support.

So there are some very extrema outcomes if you get caught breaking license.

Thorsten Rahn
==On FLOSS it does, as every programmer working on his own pet project diminishes the whole.==
This is wrong. If a project is successful long term the people who end up working on it are paid full time somewhere in the FOSS world.

Each pet project is basically an experiment looking for the right ideas to solve the problems. Ideas have to be tested somewhere.

No new ideas no new features Thorsten Rahn. The junk pile is a require part of the process.

Hamster, this is irrelevant. You made the point that commercial software will come because greed will take over. I make the point that it won’t because linux users don’t pay for software. You then go right ahead and prove my point even as you attempt to refute it.

Idiot.