:24:02
and then right across the hall,
from that was Michael Tiemann's office.
:24:07
Michael Tiemann took uh.. and
started a company, Cygnus Software
:24:12
with the idea was to sell consulting
and services around the GNU Free Software
:24:18
and, well Michael's done very well with Cygnus.
:24:21
Well uh, I spend a lot of
time working out uh,
:24:26
how we were going to make money
:24:28
and in the original GNU manifesto
:24:30
which is the last chapter
of the GNU Emacs manual.
:24:34
Stallman proposed a number of different
:24:36
possible ways to make money.
:24:39
From the beginning of the
Free Software movement
:24:41
I had the idea that there's
:24:42
room in it for business to be done.
:24:45
One of the advantages of Free Software is that, there's
:24:48
a free market for any kind of service or support.
:24:52
So if you are using software in your business,
:24:54
and you want good support,
:24:57
you have a choice of people to go to for it,
:25:00
you have a choice of businesses... that
:25:03
are in the business of
providing you with support.
:25:06
So they are going to have to in general give you
:25:09
good support or you go to somebody else.
:25:12
With proprietory software,
:25:15
support is a monopoly, there is one company,
:25:18
typically, that has the source code
:25:21
and only they can give you support
:25:24
so typically, you are at the mercy of a monopoly.
:25:28
That's the case, for example with Microsoft.
:25:31
So no wonder the support is so bad.
:25:35
The benefits of Free Software were
:25:37
tremendous but the cost of supporting it internally
:25:41
uh, and made managers very very nervous and
:25:43
so the fundamental idea I had was
if we can build a model
:25:48
that could deliver two to four times the support
:25:53
and uh, and uh, and hand holding capability
:25:57
that an internal engineer could provide.
:25:59
And we could do it at 1/2 to 1/4 of the cost