Re: Charging the Charger

   I beg to differ... but just a little bit. Proprietary software does
   enjoy AN advantage when it comes to support.  And that is that the
   licensing fees from selling the software can initially bootstrap the
   support organization. There is no such source of bootstrapping capital
   for a support organization to support, say Open Office, other than
   perhaps by going public as RedHat did, or doing a round of VC funding.
   In either case, it's much more difficult to have a pure support
   organization.


OK, so there is ONE advantage - big deal :).

I just meant that the situation on a whole is up in the air.

And I would say that a free software/content organization could indeed
have some alternative sources of funding to use for bootstrapping.  If
it didn't come from licensing fees, so what?