This implies that asking for money for software is unethical? Clearly no!
Producing software isn’t free.
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As I wrote earlier, it’s a matter of licensing.
The license owner can allow the personal use on more than one machine.
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I thing large software efforts… like the kernel … can get away with being FOSS by attracting donations of both money and programming effort .
Small developers who want to be FOSS struggle unless they have independent means.
In the academic world software comes under the ‘freedom to publish’ ethic, … academics who write software get their rewards by adding it to their CV. Something like that might work in the commercial world.
If you go back to how Unix was built… basically a group of guys in AT&T left alone to be creative… and paid for it. Could that happen today?
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and
I hardly try to imagine, but no, and no.
I designed, wrote, and maintained software for the largest part of my work life. None of my employers ever agreed to publish something as FOSS. Maybe it’s a US thing, giving some staff time to help on FOSS projects. But this never happened to me.
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It is an academic thing.
Research labs used to be like that too, but today commercial money gets involved. AT&T did not allow Unix developers to publish source code.
That happened later with BSD
I worked on one large image processing project where the code was treated as intellectual property. I did not like it. When I retired I did an R package that was fully FOSS. I found that more rewarding. I benefited from free software and I wanted to put something back.
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I’m glad to know this, bro.
For about 17 years of my work life, I was employed in industrial vision. 
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I am no expert at image processing.
Our project was about using image processing to replace visual assessment of wool samples in the Australian wool market.
What do you mean by ‘industrial vision’… does it involve robotics?
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Sometimes, yes.
But mostly for quality control during production processes.
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I can see that you are, very much more educated, on what and how proprietary software should be used, so please accept my apology for my ignorance!!
But as one who uses Linux and Windows, my philosophy has been, let Linux run Linux and Windows run Windows!!! The best scenario for me has been running Windows and a Linux VM, but my latest adventure, into the world of Linux has shifted to a more “hard install” of Linux!!!
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That brings in a whole new argument to the table.
If you buy a piece of software or should I say the licence to use it. How can you effect that. Its installed on your work machine in your office so from 9 to 5 you use it there. But a 6pm you are at home so you use the same tools. Then the weekend you are at your leisure home and use it there.
Legal ?
NO you need to buy a copy for each machine.
I am ignoring company purchases or site licences in this example.
A long time ago Borland software (remember dbase and turbo pascal) the owner said software should be like a book. Only one can read it at and one time, so you can take it with you, plus you can lend it to a friend to read but you cannot read it at the same time as him.
Better fair way ?
How do you police this.
In the University when I installed our new training room of 20 apple mac with microsoft office I used the same disks in every machine so they all had the same serial number. But we bought a site licence. Problem solved.
But with illustratrice, freehand, photoshop, etc I had to buy 20 disks and install different versions and licences on each machine. As they were networked they did a search on the network for the same licence number and if found the system reported on screen and locked so had to be re installed a real problem Identifying each machine to a set of disks.
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Are you referring to my dispute with your alter ego @4dandl4?
No problem, accepted.
Even if I don’t understand the purpose of using two identities in the same discussion. Some might find this funny; I don’t.
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Not necessarily. As I mentioned, it depends on the license. Some might allow it; others don’t.
This is my login name, do not know why it displays “Daniel Phillips”
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OK. I might be walking on thin ice for now. Do you really state that you are not identical with the other Daniel Phillips @4dandl4 ?
Even if
- Both of you have an identical real name.
- Your writing style is close to identical.
- Both of you end each sentence with multiple exclamation marks, rather than a simple period. A bouncing ‘!’ key?
In case I’m wrong, I apologize for my assumption. Otherwise, I suggest clearing your case with @abhishek. Personally, I consider using several identities a bad practice.
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Yes that is me!!!
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What would I change?
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I know for sure a company here in Finland who gives their employees “free time” to contribute to their FOSS projects on work time. The personnel can choose what’s their ambition. I know one of the founders and I respect the attitude. They have hundreds of employees. When I asked about it the response was “I want to give back” 
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I think this happened to you when we switched back to logins after a period of email authentication. … You had trouble logging in and resorted to making a new login.
I think what you need to do is delete, or simply not use, one of those two logins.
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I think it has something to do with my two email addresses!! Some of Its Foss emails go to Outlook and some go to Gmail!! You are a moderator delete the “ Daniel Phillips “ !!!
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