Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 17:15:40 -0400 From: "Pedro F. Giffuni" <pfg1+@pitt.edu> To: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD direction/Damonnews article Message-ID: <3B21407C.2B9E8D6D@pitt.edu> References: <20010604200851.A65559@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <3.0.6.32.20010608140211.00ae4470@mail85.pair.com> <3.0.6.32.20010608153126.00f7d7e0@mail85.pair.com>
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I suspect many companies face the exact same problem: 1) the MS Windows market is the really big market but it is currently controlled my Microsoft and a very small group of companies: there's no space to compete. 2) New company decides to try a very small and especific market and listens to an equally small agroup of would-be costumers asking for a linux port. 3) Linux port is released but the revenue (if at all) doesn't seem very high. 4) A minority group asks for a BSD port which is quickly rejected in light of the Linux results. 5) When wondering about the revenue, new company discovers linux users love opensource. 6) Community (AKA slashdot lusers) promise to pump development into product if it is opensourced under a GPL license. 7) Company decides GPL is sufficiently restricted not to affect windoze market and releases code under GPL. 8) Company fires core developers and hires web administrators to update the project pages in preparation for the horde of opensource programmers about to work for free. 9) The development of the product slows down significantly and the free workers that were expected end up being only testers. 10) Project is forgotten. 11) Project dies slowly (it was a project wasn't it?). Varkon's development greatly slowed down. Remember willows (www.willows.com)? XFS, Mozilla, Staroffice, I see them all going the same way. That might be the reason everytime I see someone compromising with Linux, I say to myself..boy the are desesperate already...a few more years and they will die. My recommendation to stop this deadful chain is to make developers aware that GPLing the product means they will lose their jobs sooner or later. Pedro. "G. Adam Stanislav" wrote: ... > > OK, then. BTW, I suspect they may regret GPL-ing it. According > to the web site, they have been developing this product for a > long time. They have been selling the Windows version for hundreds > of dollars. > > They only released the source code last year for the first time. > Given that it is GPLed, anyone is now free to modify it to run > under Windows, and give it away. > > So, by GPL-ing the code, they may have destroyed their source > of income. > > Adam > > --- > http://phonecowboy.com/registrar/twist/ finds a good domain for you > and checks for its existence. > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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