FLOSS software and professional use (was "Photoprint")

[Robert Heller]

At Sun, 30 Apr 2023 08:11:56 +0200 "Ubuntu user technical support,? not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 2023-04-27 at 14:48 -0500, Aaron Rainbolt wrote:
> > Perhaps I misunderstood you - I originally thought you were saying
> > that FLOSS software in general was inferior to proprietary offerings
> > by major companies, whereas now I think you are talking specifically
> > about the realm of desktop publishing and photo manipulation. I still
> > don't agree, but I also see where I was getting off track.
> 
> It's actually quite funny that in the FLOSS realm we're used to two
> opposite statements.
> 
> 1. Be thankful, the FLOSS programmers are not paid.
> 
> 2. When it comes to features, everyone is a full professional and knows
> what they're doing. In such cases, the term "professional" is valued
> highly.

It is actually often the case that authors of FLOSS software are actually 
professional programmers and are in fact being paid (eg they have full time 
jobs as programmers).  They are *generally* not paid for their FLOSS work, but 
some actually are -- RedHat, Intel, and others have staff programmers that 
work on the Linux kernel and other Linux FLOSS software.  

> 
> By the way, there is one area where professionals claim to be amateurs,
> but this area has nothing to do with software.
> 
> Apparently we all tend to overstate values associated with amateur and
> professional.
> 
> 

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