Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on December 11, 2003 02:36 AM
"The vast majority of development jobs are for software for internal use only, and the license doesn't matter as it is not distributed and allow internal use."
You don't spend a large amount of $$$ if that software is then given away. Yes, there is a theoretical possibility to not distribute because of 'internal use clause' but in practice there are lots of people in an organisation using it and spreading it if GPL'd. I have never seen any banking software that is GPL for example, or anything else that is internally used. There are no companies throwing money at people like that. That is simply not reality, not even in the middle of the crazy dot-bomb bubble was it reality. Ownership matter for internally used software, you can bet on it.
I certainly don't claim that most software is shrink-wrapped, it isn't and that’s not my point.
It's not the open source software itself that is destructive for the profession; it's the destruction of perceived value it creates that is. You don't spend $300 000 on developing some customized software that is almost the same as some free software.
We can take the stock market as an example. These days the stock market has become gambling but some mechanisms are still the same.
Lets say we have two companies, on selling rise in Japan and one selling potatoes in USA. The prices on each product will affect the other a lot, the most similar products the more it affects. The reason is that if the prise of rise goes down by 50%, potatoes suddenly seem to be very expensive and people will not pay that much for potatoes any more. Forcing the potato company to lower its prices.
Now, take for example microsoft and intel. You may have noticed that one share-price follows the other quite a bit. Bad news for Intel lowers the MS stock as well and vice verse. Say for example that PC hardware would drop dramatically making a complete PC selling for $100; it would make the OS and Office look very expensive and would make people stop paying that kind of money for it. The other way around is true as well. Say that the OS, office would cost $5 and a game would cost $5 each, who would pay $1000 just for the hardware then? You would get 200 games with endless fun for just one single PC. The hardware would look very expensive.
The fact that open source software is free makes consultants making customized software look extremely expensive. I mean, just to have a program working marginally different from something that is already there and free you have to fork out maybe $100 000.
This has halted company’s willingness to spend money on consultants. Consultant companies are going out of business like crazy these days since historically most of them have lived on services related to expensive hardware of software.
The lack of value in people working in the profession is the main problem.
Please see my reply to the post below yours as well.
I still claim that only a handful of people who are developing open source software are paid to do so, the majority is free labour.
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Re:Now with paragraphs!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 11, 2003 02:36 AMYou don't spend a large amount of $$$ if that software is then given away. Yes, there is a theoretical possibility to not distribute because of 'internal use clause' but in practice there are lots of people in an organisation using it and spreading it if GPL'd. I have never seen any banking software that is GPL for example, or anything else that is internally used. There are no companies throwing money at people like that. That is simply not reality, not even in the middle of the crazy dot-bomb bubble was it reality. Ownership matter for internally used software, you can bet on it.
I certainly don't claim that most software is shrink-wrapped, it isn't and that’s not my point.
It's not the open source software itself that is destructive for the profession; it's the destruction of perceived value it creates that is. You don't spend $300 000 on developing some customized software that is almost the same as some free software.
We can take the stock market as an example. These days the stock market has become gambling but some mechanisms are still the same.
Lets say we have two companies, on selling rise in Japan and one selling potatoes in USA. The prices on each product will affect the other a lot, the most similar products the more it affects. The reason is that if the prise of rise goes down by 50%, potatoes suddenly seem to be very expensive and people will not pay that much for potatoes any more. Forcing the potato company to lower its prices.
Now, take for example microsoft and intel. You may have noticed that one share-price follows the other quite a bit. Bad news for Intel lowers the MS stock as well and vice verse. Say for example that PC hardware would drop dramatically making a complete PC selling for $100; it would make the OS and Office look very expensive and would make people stop paying that kind of money for it. The other way around is true as well. Say that the OS, office would cost $5 and a game would cost $5 each, who would pay $1000 just for the hardware then? You would get 200 games with endless fun for just one single PC. The hardware would look very expensive.
The fact that open source software is free makes consultants making customized software look extremely expensive. I mean, just to have a program working marginally different from something that is already there and free you have to fork out maybe $100 000.
This has halted company’s willingness to spend money on consultants. Consultant companies are going out of business like crazy these days since historically most of them have lived on services related to expensive hardware of software.
The lack of value in people working in the profession is the main problem.
Please see my reply to the post below yours as well.
I still claim that only a handful of people who are developing open source software are paid to do so, the majority is free labour.
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