Who Develop free/open source Software?

[Groy]

I have seen the success of various Free/open source tools and languages and the immense amount in the programming community, however in job search and other searching the development of free software is very little, it appears that almost all rely on proprietary tools, or those who use it are Mega Multinationals;

Who?, which companies, organizations, etc. use, made succeed and give continuity to these free development tools?

Who uses GTK? GTK seems to be so popular that it has a lot of variants, gtkmm, gtk #, gtk wxwidgets supported for Linux.

Who uses QT? (Other than those mentioned in wikipedia, very few)

Who uses WxWidgets?

Who uses Lazarus?

Who uses Mono? (leaving out controversies with that propietary company)

Who uses Gambas?

the exception to my question could be PHP and Perl

in my question, I want to emphasize the development from a practical standpoint, I'm talking about companies or organizations who opt for such tools, pay for their development for internal use or sell it;

and putting aside the Eric S. Raymond's "gift culture" and the administration of systems (servers); where it seems to be very successful.

Greetings and Thanks

P.S. I apologize for my bad English (still improving)

[jayd512]

Welcome to LinuxForums!

Are you asking who pays for the development of free-software?
If so... no one does, at first.
A developer or hobbyist with the right knowledge will sit back and write the code for an application on his/her own time, and release the finished product to all who wish to use it.
There are several reasons for doing it this way... personal satisfaction, a way to make your name known as a coder/developer, or just to abide by the "gift culture".

Making a name for yourself means that you might be able to land a job with a company that will pay you a handsome salary to develop what will become a proprietary tool ar application for their use.

I hope that helps with what you were asking.

[Groy]

Welcome to LinuxForums!

Are you asking who pays for the development of free-software?
If so... no one does, at first.
A developer or hobbyist with the right knowledge will sit back and write the code for an application on his/her own time, and release the finished product to all who wish to use it.
There are several reasons for doing it this way... personal satisfaction, a way to make your name known as a coder/developer, or just to abide by the "gift culture".

Making a name for yourself means that you might be able to land a job with a company that will pay you a handsome salary to develop what will become a proprietary tool ar application for their use.

I hope that helps with what you were asking.

Thanks for your answer

but my doubt was more for; "who are the employers?" or "how many employers are?" or "how popular is in the real world of bussiness making beside the gift culture?"

for example:

I want to make a career on free software, and specialize on GTK+ and all it's variants

but nobody seems to use GTK+, beside the gift culture (spoken with respect)

thank you

[Mudgen]

That's a difficult question to answer, but look at the business success of Red Hat. That tells a lot about the potential for making money by adding value to the "gift culture". Your intent to focus on GTK is good; Linux lends itself to value-added GUI solutions that leverage the command line tools, and if you're good at building and/or extending GUI tools that do that, you can make an excellent living at it working for companies that are Linux users.

[user-f11]

Open source code is developed by Open Source Foundations and Organisations (for example here are some of them, that work jointly with Google).
Open Source Organizations that Google Supports - Google Code
Every Open Source organisation has ongoing projects with time schedule, funded by government agencies, various donations, etc.
You take a 'ticket' on Internet and develop a piece to the project you choose. Depending on what the results are they can propose you further developments ... as a volunteer.
But if you want to make money with Open Source you should visit personally the local Open Source organisation and make a deal (sign a contract, or something) with them.

[Groy]

That's a difficult question to answer, but look at the business success of Red Hat. That tells a lot about the potential for making money by adding value to the "gift culture". Your intent to focus on GTK is good; Linux lends itself to value-added GUI solutions that leverage the command line tools, and if you're good at building and/or extending GUI tools that do that, you can make an excellent living at it working for companies that are Linux users.

Thanks for your answer

I have an eye on redhat long time ago, is Indisputably the greatest and better example of Free software and good economic approach. but, from my point of view, one of the greatest thinks about Free software is the advantage that it gives you to be a kind of entrepreneur, make software at low rates, high quality because the support of the world comunity, generate jobs for the start and maintenance of my project, other jobs around the world of people using my project, perfecting and adding value for their own convinience, and.... specially... the strenght that it give's you to "compete" to the huge billionare monopolic enterprises (like micro.oft, ad.be, even go.gle). but all this only seems to be true in first world countries and in a scanty way.
I would like to start a company and make money, a way of living with this principles, if a fail then get a job about the expertise I gained;
it seems there's no choice.
thats why I'm confused "how this tools survive?" "how the developers survive?"

your answer enlight me, I get enthusiastic,

thank you

[Groy]

Open source code is developed by Open Source Foundations and Organisations (for example here are some of them, that work jointly with Google).
code.google.com Open Source Organizations that Google Supports - Google Code[/url]
Every Open Source organisation has ongoing projects with time schedule, funded by government agencies, various donations, etc.
You take a 'ticket' on Internet and develop a piece to the project you choose. Depending on what the results are they can propose you further developments ... as a volunteer.
But if you want to make money with Open Source you should visit personally the local Open Source organisation and make a deal (sign a contract, or something) with them.

thanks for your answer

I thought or hope that there is an active group of companies developing software for their owne or using it for making software for sell it, and that they themselves were supporting the tools they use, making a recycling of software and efforts in a economic approach

thank you!!