"dapunka" <dapunka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1183927676.448309.154490@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On Jul 8, 2:47 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Call for Papers
>>
>> Utah Open Source Conference 2007: The Convergence...
>>
>> http://www.utosc.org/2007/03/07/call-for-papers/
>>
>> Artificial scarcity and open source
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | This is actually one of the weaknesses of an open-source business
>> model. Once
>> | you release the code, the customer is in control of when she buys. She
>> may
>> | decide that she has enough (code, stability, support, etc.) such that
>> she
>> | need not enter a paid transaction with you. Or she may decide to delay
>> that
>> | decision for weeks or months.
>> `----
>>
>> http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9740091-7.html
>
> The customer having control... that's bad, right?
Free software is simply not possible to do for most businesses. You HAVE to
make money to stay in business and offer support.
If your business model is based on only charging for support, the better
(more stable) your product becomes, the less money you make. Hardly a
business model that's engineered for popular or business success.
I like the idea of the OS being free. It would offer a standard platform
for programs that could be shared by all. In fact, the OS development and
maintenance should be a joint venture of folks like IBM, RedHat, Canonical,
Novell, Linspire and others to promote the use of their Linux-based software
solutions.
If done right, the OS should be quite small. It should handle the
interfaces between the hardware and the software the user wishes to run and
enforce the seperation of application processes, threads and possibly drive
space. It really should do damned little else.
Everything else should be done by free or affordable software. Home users
may opt for free, but businesses will most likely opt for paid software so
that they have somebody to call in the event of trouble or a needed upgrade.
And, the software businesses, that writes software for the OS, need to be
modeled around getting paid more for a more stable product - not less
(that's just crazy). Where's the incentive to make your product more
stable?
Software drives the market for an OS. Until Linux ditros get that through
their thick beaks, Linux is just going to sit and spin in the server room.
If you really care about Linux, you want it to succeed on the home desktop.
To get it on the home desktop, you have to get it on the work desktops. To
get it on the work desktop, you have to make it cheap and easy to program
and you have to have interoperability with Windows (and preferably Macs).
Making Linux cheap and easy to program means pushing a language (any
programming language) that is easy to learn, powerful and inexpensive for
businesses use. While there may be others that fit that bill, the free
edition of REALbasic for Linux fits it to a "T". REALbasic is VB-like in
syntax (making the move of millions of VB programmers to REALbasic quite
easy). It makes porting VB6 code (of which there are millions of apps) to
REALbasic easier than porting them to anything.Net. And, REALbasic is free
for Linux.
Not to mention the ability to compile for Linux Windows and Macs from the
same source code with the $600 pro version.
Are there other options, probably. Honestly, I pretty much stopped looking
when I found free REALbasic for Linux. It has it all.
But, no matter which language is chosen, there should be a customized distro
for small business and hobbyist programmers that is centered around a
simple, cheap programming language to encourage experimentation and coding
on Linux.
IMHO, this would include a pre-installed version of the programming tools,
links to how-to sites that support the language of the tools and tutorials
and examples from which to learn.
But, a cheap and easy programming language is not all that you need. You
need interoperability.
Now, you could form a standards group, involve companies like IBM, RedHat,
Microsoft and Apple and wait YEARS for a standard to emerge that woudl
please no one. OR, you could pass Open Data Format legislation that
requires all software that is distributed or made available (by any means)
for consumer or public use to publish all formats of data storage at least
30 days before the software (or software add-on or update or extension) is
distrubuted for use by consumers or the general public.
Then, interoperability issues would be a moot point and any software maker
could use any data from any program. That would give the users the only
REAL choice that they have ever had.
(Sometimes I understand how the first people that said that the world was
not flat must have felt. But, you just keep screaming the truth until
somebody listens.)
jim
|
|
