His [RMS] advice for how individuals can make money from Free software is a little thinner, it seems to boil down to charging for giving tutorials, charging for adding features etc., and charging for support. (i.e. charge for you time (which is limited), not for copies (which require no resources)).
Do you have pointers on actual RMS wording?
Earning a living from free software development is still a problem.
Charging for your time rather than for copies. That is THE point to make the free software viable as a mean for a developper to earn his living without being as unfair as proprietary vendors can be.
It is fair to charge users for your actual work (how much time you spent), not for how_much_they_use_your_work like the "intellectual property" way to earn a living from developping software suggests.
If a developer had a mean to get paid for the time he spent (not more and not less) it would be viable to be professional free software developers, and not a hobbyist like Bill Gates called free software developers in his `open letter to hobbyists'. A developper may earn is living, but not get that rich (by missappropriating a part of the customers' resources), which is fair for him and for the society.
But by charging for giving tutorials, adding features or giving support, you only charge for your *extra* time. You can do so only if you have already spent a lot of time for free (as in beer) on the piece of software. What we lack is a mean of getting paid for the time actually spent on the basic software itself.
You cannot do that by charging users. To do so you would have to:
* Make your users register so they can use the software. That is not free software anymore.
or
* Know in advance the exact number of users that will use your software, impossible. And you would still charge for copies.
The only way to do so seems to be by external funding and sponsoring -- and better by public or non-profit organisations. Any other idea to get companies involved in the funding of free software whereas they may think that they should not fund software that their competitors will eventually use (as they will be free to do so)?
But the final truth might be somewhat cruel for developpers who want to earn their living by writing free software. Using, studying, modifying and distributing software should be inalienable freedoms. But getting paid enough to earn one's living cannot be such a freedom, as making software is such a funny thing that there will always be people to do it in their spare time even if they get no money for that.
-- Guillaume Ponce http://www.guillaumeponce.org/