[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Kiba

Just because Free softwares is often free as in cost doesn't mean people aren't willing to pay for it.

I'll give you some analogy. It is not perfect, but it is the best I can find.

Consider a webcomic like megatokyo. Its contents is entirely free of cost. But you can buy the book Megatokyo, which often have the same contents, with a bit more extra, but the meaty contents from the site is still there. To date, Megatokyo is one of the best selling English language manga in the United States. Its popularity on the net continue to grow, and its sale will also grow.

Your analogy doesn't work well because software is not something that can be turned into a physical product. Applying this analogy to software would be the same as charging for a CD or DVD that contains the software. This may work somewhat for huge software which some people can't download, but what if your software is only a few megs in size? Why would someone want to buy a CD of it when it takes a couple of minutes to download it?

Another argument may be that boxed software can include a manual or other physical items, but usually such manuals are outdated compared to information you can get online (or even the documentation that comes on the CD). I personally never use them. And digital distribution saves trees, fossil fuels, and so on.

Originally Posted by Kiba

Companies like RedHat prove that it is possible to make money, so that make your point moot.

Like I said in my previous post, it's possible for large companies to make money from open source if they sell to other businesses. In the wikipedia entry on Red Hat it says: "Red Hat sells subscriptions to the support, training, and integration services that help customers in using the open source software."

They can do this is because of the complexity involved in setting up enterprise systems, and because businesses can afford (and are willing to) pay for these services. This business model wouldn't work for other kinds of software, especially software that targets the home user market. Have you seen Red Hat make any money from Fedora Core? Red Hat has explicitly separated its commercial business-targeted Linux distro from Fedora Core:

"The Fedora Project was created in late 2003, when Red Hat Linux was discontinued. Red Hat recommended that commercial Red Hat Linux users switch to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which continues to be Red Hat's only officially-supported Linux distribution, while providing Fedora Core for more casual users."

Originally Posted by Kiba

And there are plenty of ways to make money off Free softwares. Customization, patronage, and various other models.

I'm not disputing that it's possible to make money somehow from open source software in general. However that doesn't mean that everyone who makes software is interested in those ways of making money. Personally I prefer to make a product and sell it, rather than develop a product, give it away for free, and then charge for services related to it (if that's even possible for that particular product).