Should We Be Wary Of Free-Beer Software?

semis asks: "It's interesting to see the number of free-beer (free for non-profit) software that is popping up. From StarOffice to the recently reported CAD software Cycas, the number of free-beer software packages is rapidly increasing. Sure -- this is good, until/if the OSs get market share, then happy hour finishes and the free-beer becomes expensive-beer. Is this trend a Good Thing (tm) or will it see our beloved OSs lose their open-source vision and simply become the new medium for commercial software?"

Comments

Only if you can't do without them

[spiralx]

Why knock a good thing? At the moment Linux needs some decent applications to allow people to do all the basic tasks - word processing, spreadsheets, graphics etc. Whether or not they are open source is currently irrelevent - their presence aids the acceptance of Linux outside of the tech community.

If and when Linux "succeeds" on the desktop and gains enough market share for these products to be sold at a price, this will only be a bad thing if there are no other alternatives to them, and if people can't learn to do without. As long as there are no alternatives at all then they will dominate the market and we'll be forced to buy them, but if there are open sourced, free software alternatives then whether or not they charge will be irrelevent - we'll only pay for an application that is truly worth it.

Re:Only if you can't do without them

[Guylhem]

Why knock a good thing? At the moment Linux needs some decent applications to allow people to do all the basic tasks - word processing, spreadsheets, graphics etc. Whether or not they are open source is currently irrelevent - their presence aids the acceptance of Linux outside of the tech community.

We *DON'T* need them. Just look at KDE 2 with all the office applications. Linux is free as free speech. I don't want free beer (I'd prefer free wine by the way) I want software I can modifiy, enhance, tweak for my own needs. I have no problem with people making money on free software as long as it remains free software, free as free speech.

Re:Only if you can't do without them

[spiralx]

We *DON'T* need them. Just look at KDE 2 with all the office applications.

Which are still behind StarOffice in terms of functionality. And besides, that's the point I'm making - that these free beer applications are fine as long as there are free software alternatives either now or in the future. Choice is always preferable to no choice IMHO.

Do you really think that we should scrap everything unless it conforms to FSF guidelines on what is acceptable?

Re:Only if you can't do without them

[cshotton]

We *DON'T* need them. Just look at KDE 2 with all the office applications. Linux is free as free speech. I don't want free beer (I'd prefer free wine by the way) I want software I can modifiy, enhance, tweak for my own needs. I have no problem with people making money on free software as long as it remains free software, free as free speech.

The problem is that your demographic (those who want to modify their own source code) accounts for significantly less than 1% of the entire installed base of computer users worldwide. (Look at Gartner's last report on user profiles to find which box you're really in.) I don't know of ANY software company that is willing to relegate itself to 1% market share. And that assumes they have no competition for that 1%.

You are entitled to make your choices in the marketplace, but your ideology seems to say that you get to make the choice for everyone else, too, and your choice is "free". A lot of people don't see the value in free, since free also generally means difficult to use, no support, no manual, etc., which doesn't fly well in the corporate and consumer space. Surely there are stellar exceptions to the rule, but the rule still stands.

So why do you feel qualified to choose for everyone else?

Re:Only if you can't do without them

[Syberghost]

So why do you feel qualified to choose for everyone else?

Because the alternative is that no one gets to choose except Bill Gates.

That's significantly lower than your 1%.


--

Re:Only if you can't do without them

[cshotton]

Oh please! If that doomsday scenario was right, there'd only be one software company in the world. Wake up! There's more to the software world than Evil Bill's tiny company in Redmond. Microsoft's commercial revenue is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the size of the market for custom commercial, civilian, and defense applications. Microsoft is penny ante when compared with the size, complexity, scope, cost, and revenue associated with projects undertaken by Boeing, Lockheed, SAIC, Mitre, CSC, PRC, Oracle, SAP, etc.

One thing you need to realize is that the commercial desktop software marketplace accounts for less than 10% of the overall revenue generated by software development activities worldwide. You're fixated on something that is TINY. Look at the big picture for a change.

Re:Only if you can't do without them

[Syberghost]

The vertical market is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The thousands of programmers doing internal billing applications for, say, FedEx, have absolutely ZERO EFFECT on the choices the average Joe has for his desktop PC, even if there are more of them than there are writing Microsoft Money or Quicken.

For the average Joe, there is effectively only one software company in the world.

All we're TALKING about here is the commercial desktop software market. We're talking about apples here, it doesn't matter how many oranges there are in Florida.

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Open standards are more important

[Kryptonomic]

The most important thing is that standards are kept open.

Re:Open standards are more important

[PhotoGuy]

I think this is a key point. If the *standards* are kept open, the industry benefits; for example, look at HTML editors. It's a standard that is publicly documented, and there are probably hundreds of commercial editors for, and probably hundreds (if not thousands) of free ones.

Look at Word .DOC files. Completely closed, and partially reverse engineered by a few hearty souls; and the minute Microsoft releases Word 2000, suddenly StarOffice can't open attachments. Welcome to the world of closed standards. Microsoft knows this, and behaves accordinly on purpose; make the closed, proprietary document format a moving target, and you've thwarted competition.

Regarding free software: we live in an economy; despite Stallman's fantasies, software is a tool just like any other, and people who make their living creating those tools, and producing value in those tools, will often charge for those tools.
Hammers are useful tools, too, but they take time, effort, and materials to create (just like software), and despite the fact that giving them away would be for the general good, it ain't gonna happen, as long as the hammer-makers want to eat. In a socialistic society where the core needs are taken care of (in theory), yes, free hammers for all! In a capitalistic society where you earn money to survive, expect to pay for hammers for awhile longer.

To continue the analogy further, any successful building contractor is going to expect to pay money for his hammers; but they're will worth his while, as using the "Large Rock 0.1a" alternative (from FSF :-) isn't quite as efficient for driving nails.

But the "free beer" (kind of an offensive, pre-judging term to me) software, is like giving free hammers to try out before you buy, and giving them free to the students and poor people who are using them for non-commercial purposes. I think it's extremely admirable.

For students and evaluation, being able to use or evaluate commercial grade software, is a boon to society. It would be cynically unproductive to assume it's a "get them hooked and then charge them" tack; I prefer to look at it as being proud enough of your product to show it off freely, and generous enough to let folks use it who aren't using it for commercial gain.

My company spends hundreds of thousands on software a year. Some companies won't let us try out the software until we purchase it. We tell those companies to go away. Often, we get an eval copy. Most commonly, we download the trial or free-for-non-commercial-use version, run it through it's paces, and if it's worthy, we buy it. It's *incredibly* useful...

Now that I'm in business, I'm proud to pay for software. When I was a student, or when I was first researching prototypes for an eventual business, I would have *loved* for more "free beer" software to get me rolling.

It's a wondeful trend, that will really help applications for Linux. Don't knock it.

Re:Open standards are more important

[2b]

But the "free beer" (kind of an offensive, pre-judging term to me) software, is like giving free hammers to try out before you buy, and giving them free to the students and poor people who are using them for non-commercial purposes. I think it's extremely admirable.


I agree that it would be cynical to suggest that the companies giving proprietary software away are trying to get people hooked, but how is what they're doing different than giving free cigarettes to people so they'll come to appreciate tobacco's smooth mellow flavor and full rich taste and then become "lifelong consumers"?

Re:Open standards are more important

[Afterimage]

Hammers are useful tools, too, but they take time, effort, and materials to create (just like software), and despite the fact that giving them away would be for the general good, it ain't gonna happen, as long as the hammer-makers want to eat.

It's not that the hammer itself is free. By my understanding, material and distribution costs have never been an issue with FSF or Stallman. What's key is making the blueprints for making the tool available. If you modify the tool and sell it, based on the original spec, you release the new blueprint free of restriction.

So, the hammer makers will eat. Especially, the hammer inventor.

Take Sendmail. Probably the widest distributed back-end mail processor. Free to use. Sendmail, Inc, owner of the sendmail source, gets to shrinkwrap some nifty admin tools, and sell it as Sendmail SingleClick. Somewhat closed, still obeys the standard, Sendmail, Inc makes money.

is this really a problem?

[blaine]

The author of this "ask slasdot" seems to think that commercial software is going to somehow kill the open source movement. Since when has this been true?

As long as there are people willing to write software and contribute to the community, we'll have open source alternatives to most if not all types of software. Thats the way it will always be. Of course, the commercial vendors have a lot of money they can toss around in order to get things out the door sooner, but thats nothing new.

Besides this, since when is commercial software bad? I love OSS, but I don't mind paying for software if it is good and there isn't a free alternative. A great example of this is games. I have bought 3 titles so far from Loki, and I'll continue to buy from them as long as they continue to offer a service I feel is valuable. (ie. good games for an OS that I like)

Anyways, I guess the point of this post is that this "ask slashdot" is pointless. Not only that, but it has been discussed more than once, and I'm sure anybody here has thought about it. What kind of answer do you want? "Lets overthrow the corporations! Outlaw commercial software!" Is that what you are looking for? Because if it is, thats pretty sad.

The fact is, there isn't really an answer to this. The companies are going to do what they feel is in their best interest, and we're not going to somehow magically decide for every corporation in the world how things will work.

Anyways, my $0.02 .

Re:is this really a problem?

[divec]

The author of this "ask slashdot" seems to think that commercial software is going to somehow kill the open source movement.

This won't happen for as long as the proprietory software available is limited to *applications*. If it starts to extend to compilers, middleware etc. then we are in danger of getting back to the stage when you can't even begin to write a modern application without relying on non-free proprietory technology.

Relax, dude.

[King_of_Plow]

The way I see it... the free beer only tides us over until the free speech comes to the rescue.

'Free speech' applications in many areas are currently in development. Changine free-beer software to expensive-beer software can only serve to promote the production of free-speeck software such as Abiword and the KOffice suite.

--
"You take a distribution! Rename! Stamp CD's! IPO!"
- CmdrTaco, Geeks in Space, Episode 2 from 6:18 to 6:23.

Open Source

[ka9dgx]

The more layers of the final cake that are visible, and open source, the better. In a perfect world, everyone can see and some can help fix the layers, if they so desire. If an application takes off in Linux space, there will be open source alternatives, that provide some competition, and keep things alive. The trend seems to be toward open source, for a number of reasons including culture. I hope it's a stable trend.
As long as we keep people from hijacking standards, we'll be ok.
Now if we could find a way to fund a complete, free, replacement for Office97, it would be a very good thing.
--Mike--

How could it be bad?

[cshotton]

History is rife with "better ideas" that fall by the wayside because they can't grab enough mindshare from the mainstream. Look at the number of failed operating systems that litter the computer science landscape because nobody cared to put up with limited choices, hard to use applications, and no real support organization to help when they had problems.

It's completely absurd to think that having widespread industry support from commercial applications written for a platform could ever damage the platform unless the creators of the platform want it to happen. The authors of application software aren't the ones effecting change on the underlying O/S. It's the other way around.

The faction within the Linux community that fears the prospect of making money off of software needs to come to grips with the reality that some people have families to feed and working for free in a Western Capitalist Society isn't really a good way to satisfy that requirement. Once that little hurdle is passed, it is really irrelevant whether someone chooses to give their software away or charge for it. The market will pick the best solution after weighing costs and benefits.

Trying to impose some sort of external, artificial pricing model (i.e., "free") is at odds with the underlying economy and society in which most of us live. Just like bad O/S ideas, the world is rife with failed government experiments as well, most of which fall along the lines of socialism/communism where everyone thought it was a good idea for everything to be "free".

I'm definitely not equating OSS with communism, so don't even go there. My point is that it's silly to be worried about people supporting Linux with commercial software. The market will bear what the market will bear and it's not up to a bunch of free O/S afficianados to try and second guess the commercial market. Rather, the Linux community should continue to move the platform forward and let the applications take care of themselves.

And be very, very glad that the 99% of the software industry that is for-profit sees it as a viable platform. The alternative is to be ignored by that 99% and all of their customers and be forever relegated to a niche market.

Re:How could it be bad?

[swinge]

Your view of how markets work is too simplistic and utopian. It is not in keeping with either reality or accepted economic theory.

Trying to impose some sort of external, artificial pricing model (i.e., "free") is at odds with the underlying economy and society in which most of us live.

This idea of yours is like that of an 18th century farmer who can't imagine a world where 95% of the population is not also farmers. Food production once consumed all of our collective attention; now food is so cheap hardly anybody works on it and the rest of us don't even think about it.

Guess what? Software is cheaper. Once software is written, it is essentially free to duplicate it, and once rights are given to duplicate it, and to duplicate its source code (and once monopolists are brought to heel), then we can see that charging for software becomes the absurdity. Think of the Bible. Once, all the literate people in the world spent their time copying it. Then Gutenberg devoted his machine to copying it. Now, Gideon's leave them for free in hotels and motels. [note to *BSD: you know what to do] But this doesn't lead to the economic collapse that your theory would forecast. In fact, it leads to economic growth.

It's like you said, the market will pick the best solution after weighing costs and benefits. Once the OS is free, we take it and use it as the raw material for some other value creating activity. "Can't work for free" doesn't mean we have to start charging for OSes: once we stop having to pay for them, we are free to work on other things that we can charge for. And so it will be with office applications. They are too ubiquitous to hold value for long and once freely copiable versions arrive, free they will become and remain. The economic loss to the "farmers" who used to charge for them will be more than made up by the savings of hungry consumers who used to pay for them. That's how the economy works.

Re:How could it be bad?

[cshotton]

This is the whole point I'm trying to make. "Best" is precisely what the market determines. Not a bunch of holier-than-thou OSS zealots, not a bunch of zipper-headed Microsofties, not some marketing dweeb pushing some cheesy commercial app, and not a room full of college kids drinking professorial Kool Aid. The "market" is a different sort of animal that will not be herded by the opinions of individuals and small communities. It makes up its own mind.

I agree with you in that my measure of "best" also includes a measure of quality. But quality to me means polish, performance, support, and usability in addition to what it seems to mean here, which is reliability.

Re:How could it be bad?

[cshotton]

Well, this is a nice sermon, but you aren't really explaining why commercial application software is damaging to a free O/S platform like Linux. That was the topic at hand.

I really don't understand the point you're trying to make by equating my statement against artificially imposed economies to your example of 18th century agrarian economies. One is a rebuke of a artificial constraint imposed on a natural marketplace and the other is a natural response to survival requirements in an unsophisticated market economy. There's no parallel to be drawn as far as I can see.

But your non sequiturs aside, the point IS that the market will choose. So grandstanding about why commercial software is bad and how your opinion is better than someone elses' is a vain effort when you seem to be agreeing in the next breath that the market will pick the best solution from the optimal source.

So, what was your point again?

lockin

[Money__]

If you want to find out of Windows2000 is the platform you, you have to make a thousand dollar comitment to MS (the OS, Apps, Development tools) to find that out.

The high cost of proprietary software is the "lock in." If you've payed your ms tax and found out that the micosoft platform does not fit your needs, you're fucked out of thousands of dollars.

Making that same mistake on linux costs you nothing, zero, zippo, bumpkiss, null set, void, not one thin dime. The upside is huge because for the same zero, zippo, no cost you can copy the platform onto as many computers as you want all over your network.

Picture the meeting with the CFO when you show him how you deployed all the software on all 544 of your 32 bit workstations for zero dollars. Imagine the meeting with the CFO when you point out how on the first day of deployment you have a 100%=ROI! PAYOFF=INSTANT! TCO=0!
___

Re:lockin

[cshotton]

Picture the meeting with the CFO when you show him how you deployed all the software on all 544 of your 32 bit workstations for zero dollars. Imagine the meeting with the CFO when you point out how on the first day of deployment you have a 100%=ROI! PAYOFF=INSTANT! TCO=0! It's a nice dream, but you forgot a few things. Who installed all that "free" software? How long did it take? Who retrained all the users to use a new O/S they aren't familiar with? How long did that take and how much did that lost productivity cost? Who handles the support questions when the software doesn't work (it sure isn't the "manufacturer" now, is it?) How much overhead does that add to the company? And how long is it before you're out pounding the pavement because you just cost the company 10x what that off-the-shelf commercial solution would have cost?

Just because something is "free" doesn't mean there isn't a cost associated with it (TANSTAAFL). In a lot of cases, "free" solutions are many times more costly than a commercial alternative. If you think otherwise, you've never done what you propose.

Re:lockin

[Money__]

On the FIRST DAY of deployment, the TCO is zarro, nada, zippo. All software has support costs (free or licenced) and no software has any kind of warrenty whatsoever (try suing ms for the LOVEYOU virus or any other work stopage caused by their sofware. Try taking legal action seeking punative damages against any software company on this planet (free or not) and you'll find it imposible.
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Re:lockin

[Money__]

You've got questions, I've got answers.

Who installed all that "free" software?
The same people who would have installed proprietary junk.

How long did it take?
The same time as the proprietary junk

Who retrained all the users to use a new O/S they aren't familiar with?
The same help desk that trained on the proprietary junk. Perhaps HR would be happy when you offer all employees a free copy of their office desktop for them to take home with them to help this process. (licencing cost? zippo, nada, zero)

How long did that take and how much did that lost productivity cost?
The same time it took the company to learn the proprietary junk.

Who handles the support questions when the software doesn't work (it sure isn't the "manufacturer" now, is it?)
The same help desk that troubleshoots the existing proprietary junk but now the help desk is backed up by thousands of other users around the world, and the power of the source code at their fingertips.

How much overhead does that add to the company?
The same amount of overhead that exists now. No more, no less.

And how long is it before you're out pounding the pavement because you just cost the company 10x what that off-the-shelf commercial solution would have cost?

Never :)

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Re:lockin

[Money__]

That same time costs the same money regardless of what software is used.

Why not make the same time investment on a platform that gives you the source and uses open formats?
___

Re:lockin

[cshotton]

Great. You made my point. Free software isn't free. It has the same lifecycle costs as commercial stuff, plus additional baggage. What you chose to ignore is the productivity cost for users that are experienced in one platform to shift to another. I have a PC running Windows. I have to take time to uninstall that O/S and reinstall Linux, just so I can run that "free" software" You ignored data translation and migration costs. You skipped over the interoperability issues with enterprise systems that aren't supported in the minimal set of services in the new O/S.

Now factor in that I can get dedicated tech support from the commercial vendor, commercially supported extensions, documentation, and updates and explain to me again how I'm better off disrupting my entire organization with a shift to this "free" software?

Re:lockin

[pheonix]

On the FIRST DAY of deployment, the TCO is zarro, nada, zippo.

Wrong. Your definition of TCO is incorrect. It's Total Cost of Ownership. What you're stating is the Current cost of ownership is zero. The TCO is going to be rather large.

Contrary to popular belief, Linux or BSD experts are harder to find than MS experts. They're also more expensive. That increases TCO. Your average users as a rule have seen Windows. They've seen Office. They haven't seen Linux, Afterstep, or StarOffice. That means training. That means decreased productivity. That means unhappy employees that might leave to find work somewhere with "normal" software.

Oracle has a warranty and extensive support. Does MySQL or the other free or inexpensive solutions? How scalable are these solutions? These are considerations to make when calculating TCO.

No, currently, the TCO for a "mainstream" solution is significantly lower than a "free" solution.

-Jer

Re:lockin

[Money__]

With devolpers and capitol investment moving to a web API in the millions, what are you doing to make sure your company stays with the marketshare as it shifts? What are you doing to make sure your network is open to taking early advantage of the shift to distributed applications?

If you deploy Linux across a 500 seat network, you'll not only save the company over a quarter million dollars in licencing fees, but you'll be leveraging the devlopment effort of programers around the world to make sure your network is at the forfront of the shift.
___

Re:lockin

[yerricde]

Who installed all that "free" software? How long did it take?

Any monkey can install some of the newer distros.

Who retrained all the users to use a new O/S they aren't familiar with?

Nobody, because KDE is enough of a Windows clone that most users don't care.

How long did that take and how much did that lost productivity cost?

Very little.

Who handles the support questions when the software doesn't work (it sure isn't the "manufacturer" now, is it?)

<disclaimer content="they're not paying me for this plug"> VA Linux Systems or Penguin Computing. They sold you the workstations; they support the workstations. </disclaimer>

Re:lockin

[Raven667]

Of course what you are stating is that the upgrade and training costs involved with a proprietary solution are $0 which is just untrue. You can't upgrade(downgrade) MS Office or Windows versions without some retrainging and loss of productivity. Imagine trying to move people from Win9x to WinNT (at least trying to move to something with rudimentary memory protection, etc.) without incurring any support or retraining costs. Not gunna happen.

You should also factor in not just the sticker price (free=0 proprietary=$$$) but the long term support. In the free software world bugs get squashed, only recently has MS (as an example) even attempted to fix security problems in its line of OS's, and only your particular vendor can do this. If you need feature, or bugfix, X you have to wait for the benevelance of your vendor, and most of the time they will tell you to go fuck off. With Free Software you, the administrator and user, are in control of development. (enough rambling on this front)

Also think on a longer term, what about the upgrade cycle. Right now in PC operating systems you have a violent upgrade cycle where the useful life for a machine is only a year or two and you have to deal with several "forced" product upgrade rollouts. If you pick the right free software (not an easy task but you should be looking at all your options anyway) you may not have to upgrade for many years, if at all. During this time your users can learn the software more deeply and become faster and more productive. I use LaTeX as an example, it has been frozen for many, many years. LaTeX provides very nice printed output as well as HTML through LaTeX2HTML. I have only created about three reports using LaTeX but feel that I have been much more productive during this time. Even with the learning curve I produce much higher quality documents and I believe that it still takes less time than fiddling with page layout by hand.

Anyway, enough ranting on my part. I hope that whatever technological solution you pick is the right one for your organization and userbase, weather it be free or non-free. I just got out of bed so I need food and coffee. See ya.

Re:lockin

[pheonix]

The logic is very real. Your rebuttal hinges on the concept that NT networks require more machines and more NT admins. That's not necessarily the case. If a Linux guru costs 70k (cheap in this area, they're generally more expensive) and an NT guru costs 55k, and you need one of each, then the labor is higher in cost by a margin of 15k per annum. Additionally, if you re-read the original post, you'll note that I'm not citing labor costs as the reason, but a contributing factor.


-Jer

Free as in no cost software is very dangerous.

[Jon Peterson]

I think the trend is worrying.

For instance, people might try a free-beer package just because it is free, and so think they are getting value for money.

In fact, if they got an OS package, that didn't work as well, they could help improve it and would end up with a much better package.

For instance, I found out my Mum was using a free beer package, Eudora. I explained to her that she should use an OS mail program, preferably one that didn't really work yet, as all the ones that did work had undergone a feature freeze in 1989.

"This program is broken" I told her. "It works with a very high tech GUI system called Gnome that is also broken. It will display the pictures we send you, but only once you've installed an image viewer with a really 'kewl' name like 'electric eyes' or something. This image viewer won't work either, because you won't have the required libraries to make it compile first time."

"So, first, I want you to learn about .so type dynamic libraries" I explained, "Then you will be able to read the emails I send you from my eleet Linux workstation".

"Now, it would be silly for me to expect you to help fix all this broken crap, because you don't know C or C++", I continued, "However, everytime you can't open an attachment, you should go to this web site where you can fill in a bug report."

"That way, other people will fix all the problems, and in a year or two you'll have the best software ever in the whole world."

Sadly my mother is still using Eudora, and is still able to send and recieve email from not only me on my eleet Linux workstation, but also from many other people.

This situation has got to stop.

Re:Free as in no cost software is very dangerous.

[Chandon Seldon]

Sure, until Gnome 1.3.9.1.5 comes out and then you have to upgrade all you're fricking libraries and download a hundred RPMs or compile a bunch of crap in order to make it work properly. Then a week later when Gnome 1.3.9.1.6 comes out you have to do it all again :P

The GNOME included with Red Hat 6.2 works just fine. There's no reason to upgrade if you don't have the technical know-how to do it. Just use RPMs to update anything you have to until the next version of Red Hat comes out, and pay the $5 to get a new CD...

P.S. not knocking Linux or nothing cuz I love it myself :) but it's certainly not for my parents. They're happy with their iMac :)

Well, truth is you *are* knocking Linux when you say it's not for your parents. Unless your parents are significantly stupider than mine are, or really old and senile, they should have no trouble with a modern Linux distro. (Like Red Hat or Debian)

If they are happy with their iMac and don't need to do anything that it can't do, then there's probably no special reason for them to switch to Linux, but that doesn't mean that Linux wouldn't work for them.

A properly set up Linux system can actually be easier to use than a comparible Mac or Windows system.

Re:Profit Motivates All

[morzel]

In fact: they're even cheaper. Check out Cheap Bytes.

Red Hat and a whole other bunch of companies are not aiming at getting paid for the software (which is open source, and thus free), but they do want to get paid for the support and consulting. This model is being adapted at a lot of companies nowadays...
IBM for example, has decided to drop their own webserver development in favor of Apache, because it is far more worthwile selling consultancy and support services and putting resources in that, than it is to invest a lot of money in developing their own webserver, while there is something as apache as the alternative.

Services will become the next cash cow, not software.
--
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.

There is more to cost than money

[FullaDumbAnswers]

Money is only part of the cost. Other "expenses" are time and lost productivity. If a product has the right balance of money cost/time cost (to configure+learn)/productivity cost to use (missing features) it should be used. Whether it is free or not is irrelevant.

This fear of using software that someone makes money from is misplaced.


...................

... paka chubaka

Riding the quest for share

[Money__]

Share

We're not talking about the curvy singer that used to be married to Sonny, but we're talking about market share. It's the key goal of any software company (free or not) seaking lockin.

In the proprietary model, the user pays for the platform while the company moves around the API, security model, file formats, in an effort to gain market share. Each time a change/upgrade is made, you pay again and again in the form of development costs around the new changes.

In the free software model, you get to take advantage of a companies quest for share. If at some date later down the the line that same company decides to change the EULA and start charging it's users, you have all the source, openly documented API and open standard file formats to help you with the migration to the *next* company on a quest for share.
___

Keeping the bastards honest ...

[LL]

I think people are missing the point.

The aim of "free" (as in beer) software is to limit the excessive prices charged by mainstream publishers. In a sense the free version is the minimum base level functionality (or quality check) that should be expected from a risk-free investment in software. Then you can compare the marginal improvement in the price of the commercial version and evaluate the prospective gains rationally (assuming a free and informed choice without excessive branded benchmarketing).

The biggest problem is that the "costs" of software is not reflected in the actual sale price. Quality control, amount of training, help-desk support, risk of inappropriate design/placement are the invisible costs that really determine whether a piece of software will be taken up enterprise-wide. It is too easy to shift the negative externalities onto other people (a case of privatising the profits, socialising the costs) and I suspect users will revolt one day and rethink their purchasing strategies if there were any real studies done of productivity gains.

LL

Commercial != Proprietry, SCSL bad 4 StarOffice

[Nailer]

* There seems to be comfusion between the words commercial and prprietary. I use Redhat Linux, a commericial product, released under an open source license for Redhat's own interests [gaining money from my potentially purchasing support]. My company is developing some open - source software for our commerical need of showcasing our development talents and gaining mindshare of our market.

* StarOffice would be an infinitely better product if it were under an open sourece license. Many users complain about about many small issues it would be trivial to fix if the source were publicly availiable.
- A computer magazine I write for has to enter into a legal agreement with sun to distribute StarOffice, taking around six months of red tape each time
- StarOffices installer is much more complex than the basic click-and-install RPM method most new Linux users are taught. It is very difficult to redistribute an RPM StarOffice
- Almost all users on all platforms fins StarOffices taking over the Start Menu / Kpanel / whatever rather irritating. it would be simple to make this feature optional
- Legal agreements prevent LUGs from installing StarOffice on nLinux newbies PCs. This is bad for both Sun, the LUG, and the Linux user.
- The words Redhat, Debian, and Linux aren't spellchecker. *I* could be bothered fixing it. Sun can't anytime soon.
- Staroffice is built arround it's own widget set, which looks uncomfortable surrounded by typical GTK and QT Linux applications.

All of the above would be trivial to fix with appropriate access to the code. Ahh, but we have access you say? True - but I want to work on a project for my own benefit, not for Suns pissing contest with Microsoft. They are not an independent body, not a meritocracy [as are most GPL or similar based projects] and have themselves as their primary concern.

Forgive my typos. Despite the browser wars, nobodys been inoovative enough to include a spellchecker for forms yet. Mozilla?

Re:Commercial != Proprietry, SCSL bad 4 StarOffice

[Spoing]

StarOffice...after using it for a while, I'm forced to agree with you.

Having it closed-source does make dealing with it a pain at times. There are stupid bugs, such as when you sync to a Palm Pilot, it screws up the Palm's address book. The beta of 5.2 supposedly fixes this and a few other problems. Yet, adding support for other PDAs or any other feature is at the discression of Sun -- not the users.

Still, what they ship is quite nice. That it would be better if the source were available and truely open is not even a question.

StarOffice Tip: To load an app without that "Desktop", use something like this for each app;

1. /home/USER_NAME/Office51/bin/soffice private:factory/scalc%f

2. /home/USER_NAME/Office51/bin/soffice private:factory/swriter%f

The first one is for the spreadsheet, the second for the word processor. More tips at the FAQ page;

http://www.wernerroth.de/en/staro ffice/faq/faq.html

Re:Commercial != Proprietry, SCSL bad 4 StarOffice

[Chagrin]

Staroffice is built arround it's own widget set, which looks uncomfortable surrounded by typical GTK and QT Linux applications

This is necessary in order to more easily support multiple platforms. Mozilla does exactly the same thing.

Who cares??

[Russ Nelson]

Who cares if proprietary software (even if zero-cost) switches from proprietary operating systems to open-source operating systems? Who could be harmed by this?
-russ

No need to panic...

[BlueBlade]

I'm amazed to see how many people in the open source community fear commercial software. It seems to me as obvious that, as linux and other alternate OSes to Windows will gain popularity, we will see more and more commercial software developped for them.

It's true that a lot of software for linux and other open source OSes are free (as in beer) mostly because the companies making them seek to gain acceptance in the open source community. If there had been a larger market, they might have sold it instead. For a lot of companies, it's more of a marketing strategy than pure belief that software should be free (as in freedom).

The thing is, it doesn't change anything. Whatever happens, open source projects can never be "taken over" by greedy profit-driven companies, because the nature of open-source itself won't allow it. Commercial software can't hurt linux, it's quite the opposite. I can understand that a company could want to make money with their powerful, 3D-Studio like application. What's wrong with that? People can use their Free OS to run a commercial program just like any GPLed one. More software, open-source or not, free or not, would help linux get a larger user-base and that's a Good Thing.

The question is moot

[ptbrown]

So GCC is just going to up and magically disappear the moment someone releases a non-GPL compiler? That's the point of the original post; non-Free software is not exclusive.

There are three things that make this whole subject moot. First, the GPL *demands* Free software to remain free. So no one who has a GPLed product can suddenly turn around and close the source. Second is the point made by blaine. So long as there are people who believe in Free and open source software, and are making the programs, it will continue to flourish. And since open sourced software defies ownership, a product can never be "killed" as long as people want to use it. Look at it this way, Freeing software isn't just letting out the genie, it's shattering the bottle.

The third point, and my personal favorite, is that freedom works both ways. To be a champion of freedom, you have to allow for all forms of expression. You can't say that you're promoting freedom and be telling people what they can and can't do at the same time. Trying to wage a holy war against closed source and commercial software will only set back Linux, and would be somewhat hypocritical. Sure, I may not like non-Free software as much, but prohibiting it will accomplish nothing. I want to see Free software succeed and it has to do it in an open marketplace, where it goes head-to-head with commercial software and proves itself worthy beyond doubt. Shutting it out from the world and making empty claims of superiority, on the other hand, will destroy Free software, if anything.

So go ahead, bring commercial software to Linux. I am not afraid. Blue is my favourite colour!

Re:The question is moot

[divec]

So GCC is just going to up and magically disappear[?]

Nope. But anyway, you could always write stuff in assembly language so who needs a compiler anyway.

The point is that toolkits, languages etc. improve over time. Once upon a time, an assembler was all you needed to write state-of-the-art software. Now, everyone would agree that a compiler is essential. At some point in the future, something will come along that is miles better than what open source software has to offer today, to the extent that the current offering will no longer be considered adequate to write good apps.

If the open source offering doesn't continually improve fast enough, this will mean that effectively you *have* to use proprietory compilers, libraries, languages etc. to be able to write stuff as good as your contemporaries.

You may think that a C compiler will always be enough to write quality apps. There are doubtless still people who think that assembly language is all you need to write quality apps. Without GCC, most of the free stuff today would never have been written. It will be like that if future free tools do not keep pace with proprietory offerings.

Re:The question is moot

[YoJ]

This is a really good point. For free software to remain a thriving, expanding enterprise, free software development tools must keep pace. Imagine how many people that use free software now would be using it if they had to pay $500 to buy a compiler first. Not as many. Imagine how many teenagers would be developing software if they had to shell out $500. Not many. The previous poster is right, GCC will always be around. But things evolve. New languages come out, new paradigms for writing software. Free software simply has to keep up.

Luckily, most new languages today are free. The only glaring exception is Java, and there are projects underway to fix that. Also, programmers involved in free software also tend to be heavily interested in new tools, compilers, etc. This is good.

-Nathan Whitehead

Sam Adams versus Bud

[grahamkg]

Samuel Adams is to Linux as Budweiser is to Windoze.

Sam Adams is brewed in relatively small quantities. It is a rich, full flavored beer that is (or at least originally was) brewed to German standards of purity for beer. Cost is $7/6-pack.

Bud is brewed in mass quantities. It is a light, inoffensive beer that is brewed with the best ingredients that allow it to be competitively priced for the average American who drinks beer. Cost is $4/6-pack.

Sam Adams "competes" with other microbreweries, which produce the likes of Anchor Steam and other delights. The microbreweries produce their art out of a love and passion for what they do. They don't always produce the very best, but that's usually their goal and they come pretty darned close. Profit margin on the product is low. [In OS terms, there is considerable personal upfront cost to learn how to use Linux.]

If Sam Adams (The Boston Beer Company) departs from being their very best, their followers will know and will depart in an instant. Whether they follow Anchor Brewing or Dominion or other, they will seek the best.

Bud "competes" for early mindshare and a captive audience. If mom and pop drink Bud, there's a good chance daughter and son will do the same. Anheuser-Busch sells "lifestyle" probably even more than they sell beer. Advertising is of the nature, "Drink our beer and Be One Of Us." It works not only with Bud or beer, but with many products. Profit margin is high. [In OS terms, there is little personal upfront cost to learn how to use Windoze.]

Bud drinkers generally stay Bud drinkers as long as Anheuser-Busch doesn't depart from what it sells for lifestyle and as long as the overall flavor of the beer doesn't change. Flavor migrations translate to a new brand that can be marketted without abandoning its current share.

Now back to operating systems.

If Linux departs from what it is, if it somehow becomes perverted, it will be rejected by its followers and will be supplanted by something else.

Graham

Re:It's a *bad* thing

[Dr. Sp0ng]

Please tell me just what additional freedom the average Joe "I canna program, nor can any of my friends" gets out of having the source available.

Ok, how's this scenario? Joe's been hearing a lot about this new "Linux" thing and decides, since he can create HTML in FrontPage he's definately smart enough for Linux. So he goes and installs a copy on his shiny new iMac. Then he downloads StarOffice, but it doesn't work. "Unsupported architecture? What in the hell?" he mumbles to himself as he reboots into MacOS to use IE.

Open Source Scenario: Joe downloads a src.rpm of some cool new package, installs it (in the process compiling it for his computer) and runs it. "Hey, this Linux thing is sorta neat," he mumbles to himself as he reboots into MacOS to use IE.
--

Blender is a good example of Free as in Beer

[mav[LAG]]

Blender for me typifies how free as in beer can work well. It's doesn't quite fit the mould because you have an option to pay for a commercial license which unlocks certain advanced features. The manual is also separately available at a price.

But it can be downloaded for zero price with no restrictions on its use. The money people - including myself - have paid for manuals and keys has gone back into the development of the program. I believe the Blender team were at E3 showing off version 2.0 which is touted to be a game development modelling system.

The team have not ruled out GPL'ed source in the future but right now it makes no sense to them given the way they manage their source tree. If they don't release the source so what? There are plenty of GPL'ed modellers out there for anyone to download and improve. It's just that the quality of Blender and the enthusiasm of its user base gives it more than enough momentum right now.

get a life and pay for it

[ragnar]

I grow weary of slashdot stories that talk about paying for software as some evil thing just around the corner. There is nothing wrong with paying for software. I don't see anyone trying to champion the cause of making other valuable services free, but for some people you can't give enough to make them happy.

I'm all for the hippie ethic of giving it away and asking nothing in return. This is a cool idea, but everyone doesn't have to agree. It is okay for someone to charge money for their software, and just because they initially give it away doesn't meant they are trying to bait a young generation.

Freedom of Choice

[Roblimo]

Let's see... I've used commercial, pay-for Applix on Linux and found it generally satisfactory, but I now use StarOffice as my primary means of dealing with Microsoft documents, spreadsheets, etc. because SO's file import process is somewhat easier/faster than Applix's.

AbiWord is good for .doc imports, but doesn't do Excel spreadsheets. And Gnumeric, as nice an idea as it is, and much as I like Miguel, simply doesn't give me enough functionality and an easy enough file import/export path to be as useful as StarOffice. Maybe someday it will, but I need to read (and sometimes modify or add notes to) Excel-generated spreadsheets *now* if I am going to communicate with Windows-using accountants to make sure all our freelancers get paid.

I'm experimenting with GNUCash for my personal bookkeeping; it's good enough for my simple needs, but it's certainly not adequate to handle the bookkeeping and accounting for any business much more complicated than my one-horse limo company, and it does not interface directly with my bank's software, as does QuickBooks. I would find a commercial QuickBooks-equivalent accounting package for Linux awfully tempting if it offered $50 or $100 (or whatever it cost) more functionality than GNUCash.

If, indeed, KDE2 or a future version of Gnome turns out to have a better, more stable browser than Netscape, Mozilla or Opera, full support for MS file formats, and the other basic office functions I need in my work, then I'll use nothing else, and I'll be very, very, happy.

Remember, I am a *writer and editor* who also has a lot of administrative tasks to handle, not a programmer. I am a software user, not a developer, and my primary concerns are program stability, usability, and compatibility. Sure, I can and do use Nedit (the simplest and most stable text editor I've found for Linux so far) for 90% of my actual writing, but what about dealing with book publishers like, say, MacMillan? They have whole huge systems built around MS Word, and they aren't going to change them just because I don't want to use Windows or a Mac. The best compromise right now, when dealing with Windows-locked companies, is StarOffice.

I tried WordPerfect, but it had installation "issues" with my home network, and even when I finally got it going, it crashed more than a few times on me during my first day of use (which was also my last). This level of (non)stability is unacceptable for someone who is trying to turn out a novel in his (scant) spare time; when my head is full of characters, plot, scenes, dialogue, and other writerly things, there is no room left in it for worrying about applications that crash. Right now, as far as I'm concerned, WordPerfect is for computer hobbyists, not for people who are trying to use their computers as productivity tools.

The problem with cutting yourself off from all commercial software -- even "free beer" commercial software -- is that this position not only imposes severe limits not only on what you, yourself, can do with your computer, but also cuts you off from many collaborative projects.

Sure, I wish StarOffice was GPLed, and I wish there were a dozen better, less bloated, truly free alternatives available. Someday I'm sure there will be. I long for that day. But right now, my pragmatic choice is between using non-free applications on a truly free operating system, and using non-free applications on a non-free proprietary operating system.

My choice is to use the free operating system exclusively and to "bend" on the applications. At least for now. :)

- Robin

Are there any REAL Examples of this?

[Mike Buddha]

Has this sort of hypothetical situation ever actualized itself, or is this yet another example of pie-in-the-sky paranoid pessimism that yet again shoves Slashdot into the realm of irrelevency?

If anyones heard of a situation were free beer software has been given away, then once dependence has been established, charged for up the ying-yang like so much virtual Crack, then please testify!

I've never heard of that other than the occasional anecdote from an unreliable/unverifiable source. Sounds like just another Paranoid Persecution Fantasy to me...

Training for a platform transition

[Money__]

There have been a lot of people talking about retraining a large user base that has been locked into another platform. They bring up (rightfully so) the high cost os rertaining the large user group on the new platform/application.

I would clarify this concern with the fact that nobody is born with knowledge on how to operate a computer. Yes it's true that many new employees have learned the application at another company. Yes it's true that many users have it at home.

What's more is most of the these same people already have aquired basic computer skills (point and click, RAM, hard drive, file structure). The cost in retraining these basic computer skills will not be redone. That cost has already been realised.

As a result of the user base already having basic computer skills, the cost in additional migration training to a new platform is less than the cost of the original training.
___

Re:Training for a platform transition

[pheonix]

As a result of the user base already having basic computer skills, the cost in additional migration training to a new platform is less than the cost of the original training.

That's true, but that's still an additional cost. I've considered bringing a linux solution to the desktop for the smallish company I work for, and it just doesn't make sense. The gains would be relatively minimal in most respects, and look what the negatives would be:

• Training Costs: Our users have learned a great deal about how to perform their tasks using Windows and MS Office. The cost of training the users on a new interface with new software would be large and difficult to justify.
• Employee Happiness: Our users are Luddites. They're just about as technophobic as you could imagine. Many would be extremely unhappy about such a drastic change.
• Support: Suddenly, we don't have the level of support that we once had. We don't have The comfort level of a company the size of MS standing behind the product.
• Support, Part Deux: At least in this area, people highly capable in Linux or BSD are few and far between. Additionally, they're EXPENSIVE! We can hire competent desktop support people for 2/3 the cost of a competent Linux desktop support person. That adds up.
• Rollout expense: The cost of doing a corporate wide rollout to a COMPLETELY new platform is astounding. Add to this base cost, the cost of translating all of our documents to a new format, and you have an ugly recipe. Also, much of our work is done via VBA links and macros, that aren't easily portable to the new platform.
• • The way I grok it, it just wouldn't make any level of sense for our company.

-Jer

Re:Training for a platform transition

[Raven667]

For your organization it probably wouldn't make sense at this time to change, but keep a transition in the back of your mind. Try and move things to more open standards (RTF instead of DOC, Web-based apps, etc.) Maybe sometime later, if you don't crawl up some vendors ass, you will be able to easily transition to a Free Software archetecture.

I also take some minor objection to the statement that "MS is standing behind the product", since when?!? Last I checked the MS EULA had the same statement the GPL does, "This product is not warranteed for fitness for any particular purpose", blah blah blah. Sure you could BUY support but then you are in the same boat anyway. I haven't personally dealt with MS support but you would want to at least test to see if they are competant and responsive to problems (look in the MS KB and note how many bugs have the notice "We are aware of this problem, but have no fix at this time." from the mid '90s)

Choose your poison wisely.

Re:It *is* insightful... both ways...

[taiwanjohn]

Speaking as a "tech user with limited time on his/her hands" (as you put it so well), I must chime in here and say YES.

I love open-source software. I've been using Linux since '95 (almost exclusively since '97), but I've got a lot of irons in the fire and an active social life. I'm no "guru" but I've set up entire sites from scratch before (including hardware), so I'm no newbie, either. But I really wish I didn't have to *work* so hard at getting things running in Linux.

Once I do get things working, I almost always find that it was worth the effort to "learn" my way through the process. But sometimes I'd rather be out playing pool and drinking beer with friends. I enjoy tinkering and fiddling with things, but sometimes I just want the thing to WORK, without having to worry about which "bleeding-edge" library I've got to download and compile...

There's a place for FreeBeer software in the future of the open-source "space".

Bottom line: if the software gets the job done, it's a contender for my patronage. If I can get an OSS solution to work without too much grief, I'll always perfer that option. But if there were a program like good ol' Eudora 1.5x in Linux -- that I could install in 90 seconds with ZERO sweat, I'd be all over it, if it proved as reliable as that old standby from my Windoze days. (I was particularly fond of the "Auto-save Attachments feature that put incoming attachments in a separate directory, rather than keeping them in one huge mailbox file.) The only reason I don't still use it is because it doesn't run in Linux.

The only way a FreeBeer program could "change the direction" of the OSS movement would be if it turned out to be the "Next Killer-App"[tm]... something on the level of a paradigm-shift, that takes to a whole new level above the hardware->BIOS->OS->App hierarchy. In that case, the whole OS layer would go the way of the BIOS.

Remember the early 80s, when you had to check the BIOS manufacturer before buying a motherboard or system, because some were more compatible with BigBlue than others?

I'm getting off topic now. Better go drink some beer! ;-)

--jd

THIS MUST BE STOPPED

[CaptainZapp]

The free beer software movement must be stopped at once. It is dangerous and it's to all our disadvantage. Here are the reasons why:

This stuff usually comes in tarballs . I mean listen to how this sounds. Can beer that comes in a tarball be useful? Just compare those neat packages and the outstanding documentation that you get with expensive beer. Not to mention that nice silver disk.

Mr Stallman admits he's a communist. At least some of hist statements bear ideas of freedom and community. This is bad for big corporations. Mr. Raymond is probably also a communist, albeit a more articulate one.

Free beer software is distributed with source code. I mean shheeesh, get real! This stuff is grammatically so bad and the authors use far too many semicolons.

Think about how bad free beer software is for Corporate America. Do you really believe that the nice Intel company can crank out new, probably error prone, but at least expensive CPUs every three month when the expensive beer software is not able to distribute it's bloatware?

So people, Grow up! Give all your money to Mr. Gates and Mr. Ellison. Those are the people that make America the greatest place in the world.

Not an easy question

[SoftwareJanitor]

My question is this: does the development of 'free beer' software (or for that matter commercial software) for free OSes slow down or stop development of free/open software?

Availability of Windows hasn't stopped development of Linux or the *BSDs (although Windows isn't really 'free beer', it is beer most people have already been forced to pay for).

There are also quite a number of free/open office productivity products out there, despite StarOffice being available as 'free beer' for quite a while and despite commercial packages like Word Perfect and Applix being available. The CAD software situation is a little more tricky to judge, since CAD software is generally very high end and complex. I do know that there are at least a couple of free/open CAD projects going out there, and at least a couple of commercial CAD packages out for Linux at least. I'd be hesitant to try to predict the future on how that situation shakes out.

Some people will still be more interested in free software because of idealogical reasons, or merely due to long term fear for their wallets.
'Free beer' or commercial software may also provide competition that spurs free software developers to work harder. If the free OS market continues to grow, is there room for both free/open software and 'free beer'/commercial software? More competition and more options is generally a good thing.

$399,500.00

[Money__]

MS platform (not including the OS)
$799.00
X 500 seats=
$399,500

OpenSource platform
$0
X 500 seats=
$0

What would you do with your network is you had an extra $399,500.00?
___

Re:$399,500.00

[Money__]

Anyone who believes that the TCO for such a change in platform is $0 must have no experience with such a move. It's incredibly expensive to retrain your sysadmins, help desk and users.

All I'm saying is the cost to buy Office is about 799.00 per seat. This price is without justification. If I payed you, personally, a quater million dollars to move your macrels to another productivity app, would you do it? Would it cost you that much? What if you could pocket the differance?

TCO is important in any decision, but don't let it distract you from the fact you'de pay $400,000 to ms for the glorious privilage of being locked into another cycle.

The only advantage to buying Office 2000 is that you'll be paying again when Office 2002 comes out and you'll be right back where you started.

___

RedHat is commercial...

[Art Tatum]

So is VA Linux, Penguin Computing, and a lot of other companies. There is a big difference between commercial (trying to make a profit and charging for goods and services) and proprietary (closing the doors to knowledge and curiosity and cutting oneself off from consumers). If MS were not proprietary I would gladly pay for their stuff. (Well, there's also the issues of their lousy code and questionable business practices but....)

Re: OS-Opinion article about this...

[taiwanjohn]

I wrote an article about this on OSO a couple weeks back. Here's the URL...

The Real Microsoft Killer: Open File Formats

--jd

Free Software

[extrasolar]

The GNU/Linux operating system has an attribute that few other OSs share. It isn't the most stable OS. There are others that are more stable---heck my Gnome setup has failed on me. There are others with faster performance, perhaps BeOS. There are certainly OSs with better usability. But GNU/Linux and the BSDs have permissive licenses and source code. But it goes farther.

When you are allowed to change software, someone somewhere does. In addition, there exists an entire community where volunteer contribution is encouraged. If you want your OS as fast as BeOS, it is possible.

But with free-beer software, all of this goes away. You are again waiting for Company X to release version <current+1> of its software. Because you are not allowed to change it.

Yes, we should be wary of free-beer software. Because it is so easy. It is easy to pick up on free-beer software and rely on it. But when you do, you are no longer in control. They are.

Now reading some of the other responses, including strange beer-analogies, I can't help but wonder: do you even understand what this is about? Let me list some things:

1. We do not fear commercial software. We fear propietary software.

2. To reiterate the above point, we do not fear making money with software.
3. **Sometimes** the software companies don't have our best interests at heart. If they are distributing Free Software, this doesn't matter.

4. Every commonly relied upon propietary package commonly used on GNU/Linux has a Free equivilent in development. This is a measure of the community's committment.

5. Once GNU/Linux begins to rely on propietary software, I will start looking somewhere else for my OS needs.

I can understand if you need certain software for compatibility and I think there is room for temporary compromise. If there wasn't, then I would be a hypocrite. I use Netscape until Mozilla comes out. I even have to Windows for my parents.

So if you are going to start relying free-beer software because it costs nothing and because it is useful, take a hard look at your great OS and understand what it is that makes it great. Then you will know what you are losing.

You assume everybody's starting from Windows.

[yerricde]

What you chose to ignore is the productivity cost for users that are experienced in one platform to shift to another. I have a PC running Windows.

And I have a Mac running Mac OS. When I came to college, I had to learn Windows 98 like everybody else. Is it really that much harder to migrate Windows -> KDE than Mac -> Windows?

Now factor in that I can get dedicated tech support from the commercial vendor

Then buy your boxen from VA Linux Systems or Penguin Computing.

Re:Who cares??-some do.

[Russ Nelson]

Your reply is off-topic. The author of the story asked will it see our beloved OSs lose their open-source vision and simply become the new medium for commercial software?"

I answered his question. You are responding to something I never said.
-russ

Re:Don't want to sound anti-Linux and all, but...

[timster]

Yawn. I must've woken up in 1998 again. Back to sleep...

Re:Bootlegged beer is always free

[SoftwareJanitor]

That is true. I think it is also further evidence that free-as-in-beer and even free as in five-finger-discount won't stop free-as-in-speech software.

Re: Linux.cost = 2 * Windoze.cost ?

[mattdm]

But does that have anything to do with open vs. proprietary code? Unix in general has a steep learning curve.

--

This worries me...

[cr0sh]

The number of people I meet (and judging by various comments on /. - they are here, too) who don't understand Free Software.

As noted hundreds of times before by greater people than I, the word "Free" in Free Software isn't about monetary value. The "Free" should really be read as "Freedom", and thus "Freedom" Software.

People, don't you get it? Such software is better for everyone, corporations included. The main driving force behind Free(dom) Software is this idea:

Some companies today (most who sell large software packages, generally not shrink-wrapped systems) will allow the client to get the source code to the package, for a fee (generally a large fee). The code isn't open, and it isn't free, it definitely isn't Free(dom) - but it is available.

The problem comes if said software company goes under - where does the licensing stand? Many times, nowhere - the client can't modify and sell the code, or improve on it, or support other clients who have the code base or the bianry version - that is, nobody can fill the gap, and the clients may very well go out of business because of it (though I do know that in this business, code is stolen, reworked and sold all the time, with nary a hiccup).

Enter Free(dom) Software. Maybe the client still has to pay for the source code - but after they have paid, they can't be prevented from doing what they need to with it - the code can exist seperate from the parent company. The clients can possibly stay in business, even if the parent of the code dies.

One other side effect - if the code is always available, after the parent company goes out of business - it may be possible that the company could be reformed - if the business practices that caused the failure can be identified and fixed prior to the re-startup. If it was the immaturity of the code that caused the failure, then just wait until the code matures (or better yet, help it mature yourself), then restart...