Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on December 10, 2002 04:27 AM
"To take an example. CVS is one of the most popular version control software out there. However, the total sum of income for everyone doing support for it cannot pay the salary for one whole single person (!!!). For most software there is no service or support market for it's authors or the company who made it."
Yet, you don't take into account the aggregate amount of money that organisations and individuals using CVS and those contributing to it have saved by having a freely available solution. A penny saved is a penny earned, financial wisdom that far predates the net.
Open source is for the users and frankly, that's the way software should be. How many "features" are found in commercial products that are there just for marketing blurbs? Too many and it's one of the reasons Open Source has whipped ass on commercial offerings in many different arenas, because the software is actually designed for users needs, and not to fulfill the fantasies of marketing ninnies.
"Doing products for free, thats dot-bomb era bullshit."
True, but most succesful Open Source projects aren't about producing products, but about producing tools that actually meet user needs, which is FAR more important to users, but doesn't seem awfully important to many software houses. Letting marketing determine what are important features(as seems to be the case for WAY TOO MANY software companies) is marketing bullshit, and it's a larger reason for the dotbomb, than Free software.
The Users needs are what is important, and if the commercial software companies put as much effort into meeting users needs as they do in being buzzword compliant and bashing Open Source, maybe Open Source wouldn't be the threat to them it has come to be.
At least, KOffice may not have a billion different features that a handful of NewsPaper editors might like, but it kicks ass as a personal word processor and didn't cost me a dime. There, now I've saved a hundred plus bucks, which I can use to buy things I really need, like diapers for baby, food for the table, and of course, upgrades for my system. Now I'm the one profiting from Open Source. Should I really care that some corporation who doesn't give a rats ass what I need in software, or how frustratingly unstable their crappy software is to use, makes a million less dollars because of Open Source? If you say "yes" then you live in a fantasy world where people should care about corporations who do not care about them. That's bullshit.
We, the users profit most from Open Source. Isn't that more important than seeing some souless moneygrubbing corporation profiting off of selling us crappy, poorly tested, insecure software packages, whose fundamental flaws are always promised to be fixed in "the next version", which of course, we'll have to pay a small fee to obtain? I think so.
Open Source, for people who want to be the ones who profit from software, instead of being bled dry by marketing driven corporations who only see the bottom line as opposed to user needs.
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Re:Shame it works for Largo's sysadmins.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 10, 2002 04:27 AMYet, you don't take into account the aggregate amount of money that organisations and individuals using CVS and those contributing to it have saved by having a freely available solution. A penny saved is a penny earned, financial wisdom that far predates the net.
Open source is for the users and frankly, that's the way software should be. How many "features" are found in commercial products that are there just for marketing blurbs? Too many and it's one of the reasons Open Source has whipped ass on commercial offerings in many different arenas, because the software is actually designed for users needs, and not to fulfill the fantasies of marketing ninnies.
"Doing products for free, thats dot-bomb era bullshit."
True, but most succesful Open Source projects aren't about producing products, but about producing tools that actually meet user needs, which is FAR more important to users, but doesn't seem awfully important to many software houses. Letting marketing determine what are important features(as seems to be the case for WAY TOO MANY software companies) is marketing bullshit, and it's a larger reason for the dotbomb, than Free software.
The Users needs are what is important, and if the commercial software companies put as much effort into meeting users needs as they do in being buzzword compliant and bashing Open Source, maybe Open Source wouldn't be the threat to them it has come to be.
At least, KOffice may not have a billion different features that a handful of NewsPaper editors might like, but it kicks ass as a personal word processor and didn't cost me a dime. There, now I've saved a hundred plus bucks, which I can use to buy things I really need, like diapers for baby, food for the table, and of course, upgrades for my system. Now I'm the one profiting from Open Source. Should I really care that some corporation who doesn't give a rats ass what I need in software, or how frustratingly unstable their crappy software is to use, makes a million less dollars because of Open Source? If you say "yes" then you live in a fantasy world where people should care about corporations who do not care about them. That's bullshit.
We, the users profit most from Open Source. Isn't that more important than seeing some souless moneygrubbing corporation profiting off of selling us crappy, poorly tested, insecure software packages, whose fundamental flaws are always promised to be fixed in "the next version", which of course, we'll have to pay a small fee to obtain? I think so.
Open Source, for people who want to be the ones who profit from software, instead of being bled dry by marketing driven corporations who only see the bottom line as opposed to user needs.
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