Open Source Killing Commercial Developer Tools

jexrand recommends an interview with John De Goes in which he argues: "The tools market is dead. Open source killed it." The software developer turned president of N-BRAIN explains the effect that open source has had on the developer tools market, and how this forced the company to release the personal edition of UNA free of charge. According to De Goes, selling a source-code editor, even a very good one, is all but impossible in the post-open source era, especially given that, "Some developers would rather quit their job than be forced to use a new editor or IDE." N-BRAIN's decision is but one in a string of similar announcements from tools companies announcing the free release of their previously commercial development tools.

Comments

Re:and piracy killed music

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Software Development with UNA" animation is falsified and I have evidence,

1) their developers are poorly animated / suffering from Parkinsons
2) half of their developers are female and thin. No programmers are both female AND thin. Infact the only exception to this rule is Wendy Friedlander.
3) the programmers smash their heads together repeatedly despite the coordination afforded to them by UNA (Use No Abbreviations)

Re:If it is like their website

[hauk]

WTF! why is this lame straw man argument moded up? Using a web site design as an argument for why a tool must suck is the most idiotic post I have seen in some time

Re:Urg

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't like Eclipse, be glad you're not stuck with Netbeans. Not a day goes by without a developer on my team cursing at their screen - an abomination.

Re:and piracy killed music

[raddan]

Wait-- isn't the Express version the one that inserts an annoying popup in your application? That's not very competitive, except to get students used to the IDE, but admittedly, I have not used it recently.

Re:and piracy killed music

[FishWithAHammer]

Sorry if you have to take one for the team while OS tools catch up to proprietary tools, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. You are fucking insane. I'm sorry, but that is fucking insane. I don't mean "weird," I mean "call the men in white coats, you're batshit nutty."

Open source tools are sometimes good. Eclipse, for example, is okay. Closed source tools are sometimes good. Visual Studio, for example, is very good.

Now why the fuck should I waste time--and I do in fact mean waste--so the little shitmongers like rms can say "FREE! FREE SOFTWARE FOR ALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!"?

Use the best tool for the job. "Free software" often has large downsides that require the outlay of more money (such as being less well adapted to the job, requiring extra time from the programmers--and that extra time is very likely to cost more than the outlay for a commercial tool). I understand that it gives you warm and fuzzies to be using free software exclusively, but expecting everyone else to is fucking insane.

Go see a psychiatrist, you need help.