Instead people listen to and believe moronic statements like the proclomation from Gates back in 2004 that hardware would eventually be nearly free. I'm not sure who would be supplying all the resources and labor to make free hardware,
No doubt. Gates has been in the software business for too long. He doesn't understand that hardware cannot, and will not in the forseeable future, be reproducted for free. Even if you had a Star Trek replicator, you'd still need to pay for the raw materials somehow. And that isn't exactly cheap in the high-tech world.
Linux, unix, OSX and Windows are just operating systems, the interface between the user and the hardare. They are not inventions of the almighty one(s)!!
To most users, developers seem like "almighty ones" and therefore expect the software to run perfectly.
How long is it since you used Linux and more importantly how long did you use it for? An hour, a day, a week?
I used Linux exclusivly on the desktop for work AND home for about 11 years. In the last 2 years or so I've used OS X on the desktop exclusivly. And from my experience, one's expectation is the primary factor in determining how satisfied one is with a particular piece of software. I was perfectly happy being part of the Linux community for 11 years. I often didn't get exactly what I needed, but I expected that and considered it a process of exploration and learning rather than some kind of capitalist developer/customer relationship. If you expect the open source community to help you with all of your problems, you'll probably be disappointed. Sometimes you have to do more work yourself than you bargained for.
Most users never install Windows themselves so they never run into the hassles of finding the right drivers and software that are just as real in Windows as any other OS. OSX is the only OS that has a true advantage there, preinstalled or out of the box, it does just work because Apple provide the hardware as well.
Expectations, expectations, expectations, expectations. Most Mac users would be pretty disappointed by both Windows and Linux as far as hardware support goes. No disagreement there. What's your point?
I can install most linux distros in less than 30 minutes and be up and running with the right drivers and software already installed and only one reboot. Try that on an upgrade install of Vista.
Agreed - on TFA I was hoping to see the 'PHP4 to Python' migration guide
Or Ruby! After learnign Ruby, I never want to type a line of PHP garbage again. Python's good too, I suppose. But my experience with the Twisted framework turned me off to Python.
Neither is Windows very good at doing this. Mac OS, well, it comes closer than just about anything to that goal--in my opinion--but nothing is perfect.
I'm talking about one's expectations. Not the quality of the software. Expectations are very important in life. For example, if I buy a box of popcorn at the movies with the expectation that I'll be the only one eating it and someone else thinks I should share it, I might be a little annoyed. But if I buy the popcorn with the expectation that I'll be sharing it with everyone in my group, it is totally cool. Expectations rule one's ability to adapt to a situation. It holds true with software. If you go into open source software expecting everyone to treat you like a customer, you'll probably be pretty annoyed when you find out you sometimes have to, you know, read some documentation or write some scripts or whatever.
It comes down to the fact that everyone is trained to put up with Windows idiosyncrasies,
Well, that can be boiled down to expectations. If you expect Linux to work just like Windows, you'll be disappointed.
I guess all those costs like developer salaries, computers, etc that are incured while writing software don't exist then? There's a hell of a lot more to the cost of a piece of software than just the CD/DVD that it's shipped on.
Sure, the source code has value. I wouldn't dispute that (here). But the COPIES of the compiled binaries are not worth anything more than the media they're printed on. One can make infinite copies of software for virtually no cost.. If a software company sells 1,000 copies or a 1,000,000 copies, it is nearly the same cost to the developer depending the method of distribution. The copies have no intrinsic value. If they did have intrinsic value, they'd cost the developer per copy. But they don't. If Microsoft gives away a copy of software, it is no loss for Microsoft. Maybe you could argue that Microsoft would lose a potential customer, but you can't really prove that the person would have paid for the software if that was were the only option. You coudl just as easily argue that Microsoft gains a potential future paying customer by giving away a copy. But either way, you can't trace the free copy to any actual loss of revenue beyond the cost of making the copy and the cost of the media.
Look at it this way: If you could somehow make an exact duplicate of a Ford Mustang, say though some kind of Star Trek-like replicator, would you be stealing anything from Ford by making such a copy? Assuming you paid for the raw materials. I say 'no.' You might be committing some kind of fraud by misrepresenting your copy as a genuine Ford (even if Ford uses the same method to make copies), but you haven't actually stolen anything from Ford. Software sales work by convincing people that copies of software have the same kind of intrinsic value that a material object has by virtual of being a limited resource.
If that's a common reaction, then the Linux comminty has come a long, long way along with the OS and software. I'm looking forward to trying it out and feeling secure again.
It depends on the distribution and your attitude/skill level going into it. Fortunately there are enough distributions that you should be able to find a good match. But regardless of the distribution, I think it is important that one changes one's expectations of what software is. Once you go with open source software, you should expect to take on an attitude of exploration and community. There is no more expecting software to do exactly what you need right out of the box (although Ubuntu has gotten pretty good about this). Nobody owes you anything (you didn't pay for anything). Whatever anyone in the community does for you (whether it is writing the code or supporting it) is purely voluntary. That is both the strength and weakness of free/open source software. Embrace it.
In all honesty though, at a guess they will introduce this on a cheaper version of windows, thus using advertising money to subsidies the selling,
Oh please. You don't need to "subsidize" the selling of software. A copy of software is worth no more than the media it is written on, the box it is packed in, and the paper the EULA is printed on. If there is no media (i.e., you download it), any sale is pure profit.
plus they can give them away in 3rd world countries and be seen to be doing humanitarian work,
They already do it in certain situation for schools and special promotional programs because they know that a) copying the software is nearly free and b) users will eventually become indoctrinated and therefore become future paying users of their intellectual property. The only difference in this case is that Microsoft will be able to have their cake and eat it too. They can give away something that is virtually free in the first place (and get good press) AND make profits from advertising.
The detailed description is to be construed as exemplary only and does not describe every possibly embodiment of the invention because describing every possible embodiment would be impractical, if not impossible.
A statement like this in a patent application should be grounds for automatic refusal of said patent. If you can't describe the specific implementation of an "invention"... no patent for you!
I thought it was General P. Fault in Windows. Wasn't General Failure the guy that had so much trouble reading floppy disks in DOS? And everyone knows that Microsoft didn't actually write DOS. So you can't really credit them for General Fault.
As a student I really thought I would get the opportunity to write games, but after seeing the development process at a software publisher specializing in gaming, I realized that the programmers spend more time dealing with things like physics and optimization and leave a lot up to graphics artists.
Especially nowadays where a lot of game companies simply license various engines that do most of the hard/interesting work for you. But I guess you coudl always get a job with the people who develop the engines....
But you still miss the point (and I'd argue that you've switched yours).
Triviality has nothing to do with it. It took time to make, hours according to you. So someone charging $20 is not outrageous IMO.
Not outrageous. Just interesting. Intersting to see the differences in general culture between a (mostly) proprietary platform and an (mostly) open source platform.
Yes, the price is "arbitrary", as are almost ALL prices. Set the price, watch the market react, adjust accordingly, repeat. How else can anyone possibly come up with a price?
With material goods it is usually based on some base cost to produce each individual unit. But software isn't about goods, it is about intellectual property.
If the author sells one copy, they have lost money (as per your experience). If they sell 5, then they've broken even IF they simply ship the s/w and walk away. However, if they then have to collect the funds (chase down bad orders, give up a cut of the order to auto-pay systems), support the software (id10t problems as well as s/w bugs), market (websites don't get built for free), sell (someone has to accept the orders, ship the goods), and on top of all this come up with a new version, then there is potentially a lot of time put into individual orders, whereas there may be next-to-none put into others.
So a good chunk of what people are paying for is not the software itself, but rather the cost of having people pay for that software? That's kind of messed up.:-P As for support, I'm not certain that these small utilities have much in the way of support. Most software is sold "as is." At least that is the jist of most EULA's.
Look, I get that making and software takes resources. I'm not an idiot. It is just interesting to note the difference between a F/OSS culture where hardly anyone would even think of asking money for trivial tools, and a proprietary culture where it is standard practice... even for trivial things.
So, what price should said software sell for? What criteria do you think should be used so as not to make the initial price arbitrary?
I have no idea. That's the absurdity of it all.
Don't confuse F/OSS with commercial software.
I'm not! I'm noting the differences!
Though there is a fair number of F/OSS packages that are created under the ESR "bazaar" model, most of the polished packages are actually created under the commercial model.
No kidding. I just think it is somewhat silly to "polish" up a trivial utility and try to sell it as if it is some amazing piece of software that people should pay for nearly as much as they might pay for, say, a Xbox 360 game.
Bottom line is that I wish there was just a little bit more of the F/OSS spirit on the WIndows and Mac platforms. But then again, maybe there's just not a lot of free man-hours to go around.
I apparently missed the point of what you wrote, so I don't think I really care to read it again and find the hidden point you were trying to get across.
The "hidden" point was that the cost of software apparently has absolutely nothing to do with how much work goes into producing it or how much it does. You can get large applications like Firefox for free and trivial utilities and front-ends for $20.
Sigh. I was thinking the same thing as I read the replies to you. You'd think no one here has ever written a program for fun or used F/OSS software. Maybe because it involves Windows, people have the idea that you must pay for every trivial, half-assed utility that comes along.
Oh, it isn't just Windows. It is like that on the Mac also to a significant degree. I think it is just a matter of culture and expectation. You buy/use a lot of commercial software as a Mac or Windows... so you, in turn, expect that everyone else will be paying for your software as well no matter how trivial or complex. It was kind of like that with DOS and shareware. I remember way back when I ran DOS. I wrote a couple utilities and front-ends, included the standard "please send me $10 nag screen, and expected to get some money. But I didn't really expect much. I didn't get any. Probably because sending money meant snail-mail at the time. Really, I only included the nag screen becausee that's what a lot of other people were doing. I thought I could make a quick buck. There was no open source culture.
Later (around 1995), I installed Linux and found that there was this thriving community of people just putting code out there for fun and learning. And suddenly there was no more idea that anyone necessarily owed me money for my work. Of course, I haven't exactly been prolific in producing public source, but if/when I do, I don't expect payment.
Hmm, i just tried it and it doesn't seem to display correctly. There's a lot of noise on the screen and desktop icon text is all messed up. I am running the Leopard preview though, so that could have something to do with it.
Do you buy bread at the store? If so, why? You can just as easily put all the ingredients together, knead the dough, and bake it yourself. After a couple of hours of work, you have many more loaves of bread at a fraction of the cost the store charges them for.
I dunno, I wouldn't be surprised if making my own bread was actually more expensive due to the small scale.
You pay for the bread at the store for convenience, and the fact that you know that every loaf you buy will be consistently tasty and made to some standard of quality.
But material goods are not like software. You can't make exact copies of bread loafs and distribute them at little or no cost. Each loaf has some material value. I can't get "open source" bread for free.
Bread recipes would be a much better analogy. I would not expect to pay for a bread recipe. If I came up with my own, I would share it freely.
Sometimes time is worth more than money, sometimes not. For most people, the opportunity cost of writing the interface themselves is greater $20. For you, it's not. Both are cool with me...
Wow. I've either been completely misunderstood here or society/capitalism has really done a number of you people.
All I was really saying is that the process of assigning value to software is completely arbitrary. I don't really want to go into a debate on economics, but suffice it to say that I think it is interesting that one can get so much great software for free on one hand and then on the other hand a lot of people think it is appropriate to charge non-trivial $$$ for what I see as relatively trivial products. Making an alternative to RDC Menu was not about saving $20 or implying that my version was worth more. I made an alternative to 1) prove to myself that the features that supposedly worth $20 were, in fact, trivial, 2) to learn and 3) for fun.
I guess I'm sorry I brought it up at all. I'll just get back into me F/OSS bubble.;-P
Depends on the self-esteem level of the sex-bot. The confident ones will say that it happens to lots of guys, but the bots with low self-esteem will take it personally (they couldn't excite you enough) and pout.
You sure are arguing in circles...$20 is starting to look like a pretty good deal based on the points you've made in this thread.
But I'm not even "arguing." I'm juts ranting about how messed up the software market seems. This has nothing to do with what is a better deal. That comment I made about Microsoft products being a good deal was tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.
Oh my God. If I read another "which is more valuable, several hours of your time or $20?" reply, I'm going to puke. What a completely uninsightful and thoughtless response to what I wrote. The actual dollar amounts are irrelevant.
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No doubt. Gates has been in the software business for too long. He doesn't understand that hardware cannot, and will not in the forseeable future, be reproducted for free. Even if you had a Star Trek replicator, you'd still need to pay for the raw materials somehow. And that isn't exactly cheap in the high-tech world.
-matthew
To most users, developers seem like "almighty ones" and therefore expect the software to run perfectly.
I used Linux exclusivly on the desktop for work AND home for about 11 years. In the last 2 years or so I've used OS X on the desktop exclusivly. And from my experience, one's expectation is the primary factor in determining how satisfied one is with a particular piece of software. I was perfectly happy being part of the Linux community for 11 years. I often didn't get exactly what I needed, but I expected that and considered it a process of exploration and learning rather than some kind of capitalist developer/customer relationship. If you expect the open source community to help you with all of your problems, you'll probably be disappointed. Sometimes you have to do more work yourself than you bargained for.
Expectations, expectations, expectations, expectations. Most Mac users would be pretty disappointed by both Windows and Linux as far as hardware support goes. No disagreement there. What's your point?
No, thanks.
-matthew
Or Ruby! After learnign Ruby, I never want to type a line of PHP garbage again. Python's good too, I suppose. But my experience with the Twisted framework turned me off to Python.
-matthew
Sure, why not? They're just doing whatever makes business sense. It has nothing to do with the quality or capabilities of the language.
-matthew
If only the subject had left out the "4." "PHP End of Life." I'd cheer for that. I'd say good riddance to a braindead language.
-matthew
I'm talking about one's expectations. Not the quality of the software. Expectations are very important in life. For example, if I buy a box of popcorn at the movies with the expectation that I'll be the only one eating it and someone else thinks I should share it, I might be a little annoyed. But if I buy the popcorn with the expectation that I'll be sharing it with everyone in my group, it is totally cool. Expectations rule one's ability to adapt to a situation. It holds true with software. If you go into open source software expecting everyone to treat you like a customer, you'll probably be pretty annoyed when you find out you sometimes have to, you know, read some documentation or write some scripts or whatever.
Well, that can be boiled down to expectations. If you expect Linux to work just like Windows, you'll be disappointed.
-matthew
Sure, the source code has value. I wouldn't dispute that (here). But the COPIES of the compiled binaries are not worth anything more than the media they're printed on. One can make infinite copies of software for virtually no cost.. If a software company sells 1,000 copies or a 1,000,000 copies, it is nearly the same cost to the developer depending the method of distribution. The copies have no intrinsic value. If they did have intrinsic value, they'd cost the developer per copy. But they don't. If Microsoft gives away a copy of software, it is no loss for Microsoft. Maybe you could argue that Microsoft would lose a potential customer, but you can't really prove that the person would have paid for the software if that was were the only option. You coudl just as easily argue that Microsoft gains a potential future paying customer by giving away a copy. But either way, you can't trace the free copy to any actual loss of revenue beyond the cost of making the copy and the cost of the media.
Look at it this way: If you could somehow make an exact duplicate of a Ford Mustang, say though some kind of Star Trek-like replicator, would you be stealing anything from Ford by making such a copy? Assuming you paid for the raw materials. I say 'no.' You might be committing some kind of fraud by misrepresenting your copy as a genuine Ford (even if Ford uses the same method to make copies), but you haven't actually stolen anything from Ford. Software sales work by convincing people that copies of software have the same kind of intrinsic value that a material object has by virtual of being a limited resource.
-matthew
It depends on the distribution and your attitude/skill level going into it. Fortunately there are enough distributions that you should be able to find a good match. But regardless of the distribution, I think it is important that one changes one's expectations of what software is. Once you go with open source software, you should expect to take on an attitude of exploration and community. There is no more expecting software to do exactly what you need right out of the box (although Ubuntu has gotten pretty good about this). Nobody owes you anything (you didn't pay for anything). Whatever anyone in the community does for you (whether it is writing the code or supporting it) is purely voluntary. That is both the strength and weakness of free/open source software. Embrace it.
-matthew
And long time slashdotter! Do you impress the chicks with your low user ID? :-)
Oh please. You don't need to "subsidize" the selling of software. A copy of software is worth no more than the media it is written on, the box it is packed in, and the paper the EULA is printed on. If there is no media (i.e., you download it), any sale is pure profit.
They already do it in certain situation for schools and special promotional programs because they know that a) copying the software is nearly free and b) users will eventually become indoctrinated and therefore become future paying users of their intellectual property. The only difference in this case is that Microsoft will be able to have their cake and eat it too. They can give away something that is virtually free in the first place (and get good press) AND make profits from advertising.
-matthew
A statement like this in a patent application should be grounds for automatic refusal of said patent. If you can't describe the specific implementation of an "invention"... no patent for you!
-matthew
I thought it was General P. Fault in Windows. Wasn't General Failure the guy that had so much trouble reading floppy disks in DOS? And everyone knows that Microsoft didn't actually write DOS. So you can't really credit them for General Fault.
-matthew
Especially nowadays where a lot of game companies simply license various engines that do most of the hard/interesting work for you. But I guess you coudl always get a job with the people who develop the engines....
-matthew
Well, at least you didn't add me as a foe. I'll be content with "freak."
Couldn't find a joint, eh?
Holy crap, dude. Take a Xanax or smoke a joint or something. This whole thread is a bit of a joke... and so was my post in it.
2 + -1 = 1
Abuse of math. Get it?
Yeah, you wasted your time... by being a prick.
Not outrageous. Just interesting. Intersting to see the differences in general culture between a (mostly) proprietary platform and an (mostly) open source platform.
With material goods it is usually based on some base cost to produce each individual unit. But software isn't about goods, it is about intellectual property.
So a good chunk of what people are paying for is not the software itself, but rather the cost of having people pay for that software? That's kind of messed up.
Look, I get that making and software takes resources. I'm not an idiot. It is just interesting to note the difference between a F/OSS culture where hardly anyone would even think of asking money for trivial tools, and a proprietary culture where it is standard practice... even for trivial things.
I have no idea. That's the absurdity of it all.
I'm not! I'm noting the differences!
No kidding. I just think it is somewhat silly to "polish" up a trivial utility and try to sell it as if it is some amazing piece of software that people should pay for nearly as much as they might pay for, say, a Xbox 360 game.
Bottom line is that I wish there was just a little bit more of the F/OSS spirit on the WIndows and Mac platforms. But then again, maybe there's just not a lot of free man-hours to go around.
No big debate, really.
-matthew
The "hidden" point was that the cost of software apparently has absolutely nothing to do with how much work goes into producing it or how much it does. You can get large applications like Firefox for free and trivial utilities and front-ends for $20.
Oh, it isn't just Windows. It is like that on the Mac also to a significant degree. I think it is just a matter of culture and expectation. You buy/use a lot of commercial software as a Mac or Windows... so you, in turn, expect that everyone else will be paying for your software as well no matter how trivial or complex. It was kind of like that with DOS and shareware. I remember way back when I ran DOS. I wrote a couple utilities and front-ends, included the standard "please send me $10 nag screen, and expected to get some money. But I didn't really expect much. I didn't get any. Probably because sending money meant snail-mail at the time. Really, I only included the nag screen becausee that's what a lot of other people were doing. I thought I could make a quick buck. There was no open source culture.
Later (around 1995), I installed Linux and found that there was this thriving community of people just putting code out there for fun and learning. And suddenly there was no more idea that anyone necessarily owed me money for my work. Of course, I haven't exactly been prolific in producing public source, but if/when I do, I don't expect payment.
Hmm, i just tried it and it doesn't seem to display correctly. There's a lot of noise on the screen and desktop icon text is all messed up. I am running the Leopard preview though, so that could have something to do with it.
-matthew
I dunno, I wouldn't be surprised if making my own bread was actually more expensive due to the small scale.
But material goods are not like software. You can't make exact copies of bread loafs and distribute them at little or no cost. Each loaf has some material value. I can't get "open source" bread for free.
Bread recipes would be a much better analogy. I would not expect to pay for a bread recipe. If I came up with my own, I would share it freely.
-matthew
Wow. I've either been completely misunderstood here or society/capitalism has really done a number of you people.
All I was really saying is that the process of assigning value to software is completely arbitrary. I don't really want to go into a debate on economics, but suffice it to say that I think it is interesting that one can get so much great software for free on one hand and then on the other hand a lot of people think it is appropriate to charge non-trivial $$$ for what I see as relatively trivial products. Making an alternative to RDC Menu was not about saving $20 or implying that my version was worth more. I made an alternative to 1) prove to myself that the features that supposedly worth $20 were, in fact, trivial, 2) to learn and 3) for fun.
I guess I'm sorry I brought it up at all. I'll just get back into me F/OSS bubble.
-matthew
Depends on the self-esteem level of the sex-bot. The confident ones will say that it happens to lots of guys, but the bots with low self-esteem will take it personally (they couldn't excite you enough) and pout.
But I'm not even "arguing." I'm juts ranting about how messed up the software market seems. This has nothing to do with what is a better deal. That comment I made about Microsoft products being a good deal was tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.
-matthew
Oh my God. If I read another "which is more valuable, several hours of your time or $20?" reply, I'm going to puke. What a completely uninsightful and thoughtless response to what I wrote. The actual dollar amounts are irrelevant.