Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 14:53:28 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: "FreeBSD Questions" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Thanks guys Message-ID: <02cf01c28b1c$0b487bc0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> 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> <02bf01c28b15$9b7cb2d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <3DD257F2.3060906@potentialtech.com>
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Bill writes: > That's just wrong. Open source does not, by definition, > have the be writting by volunteers. But it almost always is. The source code is the golden treasure of a software company; if it loses control of that, it goes out of business for lack of revenue. So source is never published unless a company has other means of making money. > A perfect example is MySQL AB, which sells commercial > licenses of its products to many people, and (by all > appearances) is making quite a good living at it. If you need a commercial license to use their software, it's not open source. > The mistake you're making here is comparing open > source to commercial software. The mistake most open-source advocates make is in thinking that they can somehow ignore reality and live without income, or generate revenue without products or services to sell. That cannot happen, and it is this reality that makes open-source self-limiting in extent. > What you should do is compare open source to > closed source. I am. > Personally, I have no problem paying for software, > if it's worthwhile. Nor do I. I don't normally have to see the source code, if I have reason to believe that the vendor is trustworthy, or is liable for its actions. There are a few exceptions. I like to see published source code for cryptographic and security products, for example. > An operating system that does something unexpected, > which I can't change and which the developers write > off as a "design decision" is not what I'd like to > pay money for. Operating systems are no different from any other software in this respect. > You've got a lot of interesting ideas. They are not my ideas. They are economic realities. > If that's true, how do you explain MySQL AB, > Redhat, etc? Easy. They sell things. Their "open" nature is extremely circumscribed. The source itself may be "open," but just about everything else about it--including, in some cases, just the right to use it--is _closed_, and must be paid for. There isn't any way around this. There is no utopia. People who seriously believe that open source is a path to a future paradise in which software will be free to all and will magically write itself without any need to pay programmers are in for some rude surprises once they get out into the real world. The only people I've seen who really believe this are those who are being supported by someone or something else, e.g., college students, part-time volunteers, etc. > Even Sun has sold "source licenses" to it's OS > at times (correct me if I'm wrong on this one). That's not open source. Just publishing source doesn't make it open, if there are restrictions placed on its use. Musical scores are routinely published, but that doesn't mean that you can copy or perform them for free. > I doubt both of those. I don't. The basic business model is sound and has worked for centuries; Microsoft is no exception to the rule, and nothing will change. > Microsoft's licensing practices are starting to mimic > the things that Novell did when they were starting > to lose ground ... Correlation is not causation. If Microsoft really resembled Novell, it would have followed the same path. Furthermore, Microsoft didn't invent such licensing practices. Many other companies have used them--successfully. I know it's romantic to think that Microsoft is somehow going to collapse on itself in the near future, but that is very unlikely. Instead, Microsoft will go the path of all other large companies, passing through a golden age, then settling into gradual stability followed by decline, and eventually breaking. That can take decades, though, and Microsoft is still in its prime, although the golden age is over. > ... and those things forced them down faster than > Microsoft's anti-Novell advertising. Microsoft will not follow the same path. > But on the flip side, Novell is still around and making some money, although > it's not the industry heavyweight it once was. Novell was poorly managed. There was no one single Great Error that made the difference. A big problem with Novell was that it was almost a one-trick pony, like Quark. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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