I’m personally still struggling with how to describe the different ways of distributing what will eventually be a completely free version of Puppet and a non-free version, but the reality is that marketing has a real purpose, which is to help us describe what we’re doing in terms the audience understands. This often entails us being forced to use terms that we’re unhappy with (like CMDB) but that our audience knows and likes.

At this point the whole open source/free thing has gotten silly. I had Richard Stallman yell at me in an ice cream shop because I personally don’t care about this political fight so I used the term he doesn’t like, even though I was trying to say I supported his work.

I’m just trying to build a business producing great software, and the reality is that engineers are bloody expensive, and it’s tough to build a great business producing great software without somehow paying your engineers. I expect I’ll continue to make mistakes and struggle through what to do, what to call it, and how to make money until the heat death of the universe, or at least my own expiration.

Attempting to describe “open source” vs. “commercial” software is a common mistake many people make. For starters, code that is “open” can certainly be sold commercially. In other words, the terms are not at odds with each other. By using this comparison when attempting to describe a piece of software, we end up implying that the only distinguishing quality of a particular group of bits is the final sticker price. As a brilliant programmer and long time sys-admin, you of all people know that this is the furthest thing from the truth. Also, by using words like “open” and “closed” to describe software, we essentially promote the agenda of the Open Source community which has all but abandoned the fundamental principles involving software freedoms 0-3 in favor of the pragmatic side-effects that usually can (and are) achieved as a result of those freedoms. In other words, it is foolish to value the functionality and/or perceived security of a piece of software over the freedoms to modify the software in order to improve either aspect. The former celebrates something static that is mostly based on perception while the latter celebrates endless potential.

A far better approach would be to just avoid all the market created terminology and simply stick to distinguishing software based on the freedoms provided by the license. The free software community achieves this by simply identifying software as either “free” or “non-free”. This of course, has nothing to do with the commercial feasibility of the software. The description simply calls attention to the most important qualities a particular piece of software offers to its user base; the freedom (or not) to use for any purpose, modify, and/or redistribute.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Many thanks ,

A puppet user who values Free Software and its community.