From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Nov 13 5: 7:28 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9073237B401 for ; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 05:07:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from freebie.atkielski.com (ASt-Lambert-101-2-1-14.abo.wanadoo.fr [193.251.59.14]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E62A943E3B for ; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 05:07:25 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from anthony@freebie.atkielski.com) Received: from contactdish ([10.0.0.10]) by freebie.atkielski.com (8.11.3/8.11.3) with SMTP id gADD7NG73393 for ; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 14:07:24 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from anthony@freebie.atkielski.com) Message-ID: <02bf01c28b15$9b7cb2d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> From: "Anthony Atkielski" To: "FreeBSD Questions" References: <20021113055636.76357.qmail@web21305.mail.yahoo.com> <1037168694.263.3.camel@asa.gascom.net.ru> <000e01c28af3$35060c30$1baccecd@donatev49iknkl> <20021113104844.GA1869@raggedclown.net> <028701c28b07$d8036bd0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <002301c28b0c$359598a0$1baccecd@donatev49iknkl> Subject: Re: Thanks guys Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 14:07:23 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2720.3000 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Grant writes: > I like that figure, 7 billion. But let's break > it down. 6 billion on promotion. $666.666.000 > on production. and 1 million on support. This is incorrect. Most of the development cost goes to pay the salaries of the engineers and programmers writing the product. Support is the major continuing cost of software for a vendor, but it's not an up-front cost, whereas the development costs must be paid before the product even goes out the door. Very few companies can afford to shell out several billion dollars to write a new operating system. Microsoft is one of the few that can. Apple could not, so it adapted UNIX instead, although I predict that OS X will gradually evolve from a UNIX-like operating system into a fully-proprietary system (because the latter makes more money). > I have faith that open source will be on top > in 10 years. I doubt that. Open source is written by volunteers who still have to have day jobs. If all software was open source, there'd be no jobs to support the volunteers writing open source, and so open source would destroy itself, and you'd be back to proprietary software. This effect will keep open source in check. Of course, software companies could write software and then distribute the source, but no company that wants to survive can afford to do that--it would be giving away its only source of revenue. > It's going to be this generation that takes Bill down!! It's this generation and its successors that will keep Bill rich. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message