The users left their Tivo connected to a phone line so it could dial in and set it's clock. It does that daily. It doesn't get program guide information in these calls, but it DOES get upgrades (apparently).
Tivo did not break their hardware. Their hardware is EXACTLY the same as it was the day they bought it.
Tivo did change their SOFTWARE, as they reserve the right to do (it's in the user manual).
In any case, your argument makes no sense. They admit it was a MISTAKE. An overlooked side effect of new code intended for new machines. You say it makes no sense because they should think about lost sales from word of mouth, but how do you plan for word of mouth for a mistake you didn't know you'd made?
Is Tivo really the first software company ever to make a mistake in a release?
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.
C'mon guys, why do you HAVE to have a conspiracy EVERYWHERE? Are you really that paranoid? It's not like this is the first software release in the history of computing that bugs or unintended side effects, is it?
Tivos are nearly useless without the service anyway. There are less than 200,000 total sold. There's a small handful of people not using them with the service. They have ALWAYS said that they were going to eliminate the functionality of new units without the service, just as your cell phone won't work without a service, or your beeper. This isn't a change. So they started adding those things into 2.01 that would make the newer units more reliant on the service and nobody noticed that they would also affect the un-subscribed. Inadequate testing? Perhaps. Malicious intent? Not when they are doing now exactly what they told us they would do all along. Six months ago we were told that "new machines that ship with 2.01 will be more limited in what they can do without the service, but those machines that shipped with 1.3 will keep the abilities they have now" and guess what? That's exactly what they are doing. It's not hidden, it's not a conspiracy, they TOLD us what the plan was. They have a few bugs in the new software that make it less usable for those without the service, but they are going to fix those. Show me any significant program without bugs. We've been running Sendmail on the net for 20 years, is it bug free yet? Is it even security hole free yet? How about BIND? Apache? Linux? FreeBSD? Any of them 100% free of bugs?
Of course not. And now that we make consumer electronics with computers, we are likely to see similar bugs throughout their existence as well.
30-second skip was not a feature. Tivo never claimed they had it. If you bought a unit based on functionality that the manufacturer insisted the product didn't have, just in hopes that you can trick it into doing it somehow, then you are pretty much an idiot and deserve what you get.
I'm so tired of hearing this. Guess what? I live in Florida and they hired an independent accounting firm to recount the votes. They finished in April. Wanna know the results? George Bush won. They counted them 4 different ways. By the definition George Bush proposed, George Bush won. By the definition Al Gore proposed, George Bush won. In 3 out of the 4 recount methods, George Bush won (though the margins were different). The fourth was a system nobody had suggested, and Gore did win by a few votes (less than 10 if I recall).
So, you guys can get over it. The election results were correct. George Bush won, even when the complete recount is tallied. But aren't you glad we didn't have to wait until April to learn who would be President?
This seems like it would be a really easy way to explain this, but I haven't seen anybody talk about it.
"This is a radio I purchased" [Show a radio]
"This is a radio I built from directions." [Show a radio hand-built, or from one of those Radio Shack kits]. "Both radios allows me to access copyrighted works. In fact, they decrypt them from their current form of oscillations of radio waves into audible sound so that I may listen to them. This is perfectly legal."
"This is a CD containing PowerDVD, a DVD Player, which I purchased." [Show PowerDVD CD]
"This is a CD containing a DVD Player which I built from directions." [Show a CD containing DeCSS]. "Both DVD Players allows me to access copyrighted works. In fact they decrypt them from their current form of microscopic depressions in the DVD surface into audio and video so that I may watch and listen to them."
"I can give you the radio I built. I can build more and sell them if I choose, or give them away for free. But I can't give you the DVD player I built. I should be able to. I shouldn't have to be a giant corporation to be able to build a DVD player and give it away or sell it. "
You can't forget that "trucks" are sold under different rules than "cars", meaning that car dealers have more flexibility in selling a truck and can offer incentives that they cannot offer with cars. They have different fuel requirements and even different financing requirements. Car dealers like selling trucks, it's easier. Trucks are popular all over the south, not just in Texas (though the gunrack is optional in the rest of the south ).
Tivo has always had this feature. You can, on every Tivo ever, watch a program you recorded earlier while recording a new program. This does not require 2 tuners, which is what Microsoft has.
In the DirecTivo, which is the direct competitor to UltimateTV, since both require a DirecTV source, there are 2 tuners built in. Tivo has not activated the second tuner in it's software. Tivo hope to have an update this summer that will enable the second tuner.
Actually, I realized after I posted that I had forgotten to add the comment that I felt blocking the web site was probably in error, though I can see the evolution from blocking the spam email itself to blocking web sites that are intended as sources of spamware or destinations of those ubiquitous "click here" spam messages.
I had read the article and I did mean my comments to address the blocking of email. I don't really have enough information to have formed a cogent opinion on the blocking of whole subnets (you can hardly call the editorial unslanted), and have mixed feelings about it, so didn't want to address it directly. My initial reaction is that I don't like the idea, but you also have to look at the real impact. If there are only 7 backbone providers in the world and all 7 subscribed, what happens then? Would we all be mad because half the net just disappeared, or would we all be happy because we could no longer be bothered by unsecured mail servers and spamweare sites, and the people sending the spam would see such a massive drop off on their return that they might actually stop? And when the half the net that disappeared came back because they cleaned up their act, would that be a better net than the one we have now? Is the short term pain worth the long term gain? Is the long term gain even possible? These are not simple questions, but certainly deserve consideration.
Thanks for pointing out my omission, though. I need to be more complete when posting.
The RBL is opt-in. Consumers have the choice of moving to a provider that doesn't opt-in if they desire to. I think ISPs should list whether they subscribe to RBL or MAPS clearly and publicly, but they should not be denigrated for doing so. They are not, in fact, hampering consumer choice, but aiding it. Many of us would rather not get SPAM and having a provider that opts in helps with that very valid cause. As long as RBL is optional, I don't see a problem.
Another point I want to add is that RBL works. I once worked for an ISP that refused to secure their mail server, because it meant the pointy head bosses might actually have to understand how their mail works when they were travelling. They ran for a year that way, against advice, and then one day popped up on the RBL list and started getting complaints. Problem fixed in about a day. The Sys Admin had to work his butt off to fix the relay, but he got it up and got off the RBL within a couple days. And he understood the net better afterwards.
Yeah, these new-fangled automobiles are too hard. They need to be easier. There's levers and pedals and wheels and tires and air pressure and oil pressure and buttons and lights and they aren't all the same and it's just too hard to figure out! People will never get the hang of it on their own. We'll have to force the industry to standardize on one interface so that people have a chance to understand it.
Or, we could just offer training classes and require tests that demonstrate competency before you are allowed to use one alone.
Of course you can. This isn't even new. What do you think they do to people who phone in bomb threats, even if they didn't have a bomb and had no intent of actually blowing anything up? It's likely that the law was enacted precisely for people who make bomb threats with no intent to follow up, just for the disruption factor. If you have to shut your business down for a couple hours while the police wander through looking for a bomb, did it matter that it was non-existent?
And, of course, we all know what happens if you say "bomb" or "gun" in an airport.
And let us not forget UNIX itself. AT&T didn't ask Ritchie and Thompson to invent a new operating system, they did it on their own, because they were interested in it. AT&T was legally prohibited from making a profit off of computer systems at that time and for decades afterwards, yet Linux and BSD both owe their existence to the development of UNIX at AT&T labs.
Perhaps you did not realize it, but there are human beeings outside the us as well.
Alas, we Americans often fail to realize that people outside our borders might have thoughts and opinions other than "Wow, America is great, how can I go there?".
That's why we have news stories with such enlightening headlines as "2 Americans killed as jumbo jet crashes leaving no survivors". We forget that people from other countries can have value too!
Sometimes we are so ameri-centric that it's hard to imagine that the rest of the world doesn't exist just for holiday destinations and cheap imports (oh, yeah, and a market for products too important to stop making but too dangerous for Americans to consume...like tobacco).
Actually, the Episode IV: A New Hope title was not added until the re-release AFTER Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
In fact, there was much confusion when Empire opened with Episode V and many casual moviegoers wandering around wondering where episodes 2,3, and 4 had gone (assuming Star Wars to be episode 1).
Lucas had explained that he always wanted it to be part of a trilogy, but that he had had so much trouble getting financing and had no idea how successful it would be (there were articles announcing it would be the greatest dud of all time), that he had left the subtitle off, in case he could only make the one.
As we all know, it turned out bigger than anyone expected, and he was able to make the sequels and add the Episode IV: A New Hope title when re-released.
There were other subtle changes. Obi-wan, when first meeting Luke and being told that R2-D2 claimed to belong to him originally said "I don't recall ever owning a droid. Leastways not one of these modern ones." The "modern" line was removed for the first re-release after Lucas had decided the entire storyline would be told from the perspective of the droids, and so R2-D2 couldn't be a modern droid, if he were to be in Episodes 1, 2 and 3.
And in case you wonder what my source is: it's me. I saw these films on their first run release, over and over and over. The interviews with Lucas were mostly taken from Starlog magazine, which we devoured for any information about the upcoming movie, long before we had a World Wide Web. I knew "The Empire Strikes Back" was Episode V when I went to the first showing in town, but most of the other people who were there did not, and there was a loud outcy of confusion when the opening scroll went by.
It was several YEARS after "Star Wars" premiered that the film contained "Episode IV: A New Hope", though Lucas had always wanted it to be part of a serial (like the Saturday afternoon serials of his youth).
What happens when "reboot the server" doesn't solve it? He's an ISP with a multimillion dollar contract. That means he needs to be dealing in throughput analysis and probably such things as BGP and OSPF. Salesguy who can click through menu items isn't going to be able to deal with that.
"Only needs to keep the system running most of the time" is the key though. How bad is it to be down? How bad is it to be down for a day or 2 days or a week while he figures out that the DNS is misconfigured and sent a bad update upstream (and oh yeah, even if he fixes it immediately it won't propagate from the root server until 6 am tomorrow)? How much downtime is acceptable in your business? The answer to that determines the level of an administrator you need.
Actually, you were licensing the use of software that had a freeze-frame function. If it were hardware, they couldn't take it away (in fact, the button remains). Since software is not sold in this country, but instead licensed for use, you technically have nothing. The hardware that you own remains the same. The company that you licensed the software from has no obligation to continue licensing that software to you, however, they are (apparently) willing to license (at the same terms, amazingly) similar software to you.
I bet you also insist that Television programming should be free, right? That ad paid for the program, it's hardly needless. Tivo, ReplayTV and their ilk are changing the rules, but the broadcasters still need to make money in order to make TV shows. You will pay for them, somehow.
"There is no guarantee that your vote actually goes into the computer the way it looks on the touch screen," Dr. Neumann said. "What does it take to buy a computer programmer? A couple of years' salary and a house in the Cayman Islands?"
Well, yes, but that's only true if the source is closed. If the source to that touchscreen application is open, then many other programmers will be able to look at it and SEE if it's compromised, or if the vote actually DOES go into the computer the way it appears on the Touch Screen.
Nice of them to be making our case for us, don't you think?
How about charging for the service of compiling it? Making sure the right libraries and compiler settings are set so a binary will definitely work?
Download the source for free, but the binaries cost money? Sure, somebody will post the binary somewhere, but a large number of users will simply not find the WAREZ version and pay for the binary version (how many Windows users do you think could compile Quake3?)
The advanced users will download the source and compile it themselves, but I bet a lot of people would pay (a reasonable fee) for the pre-compiled version, especially if you could get it optimized for your processor and operating system.
That's just one way to make money. There are others. The fact that you can't think of any simply shows a lack of imagination, not an indication that there aren't any.
Wouldn't it actually make more sense to have a Tax Refund rather than a Tax Cut? I agree, future surplus projections may be off. We know what we have now, and sending out a check to each taxpayer would immediately put money in the peoples hands and boost the economy more effectively than a tax cut would.
In addition, it doesn't change the tax structure so the government continues collecting the taxes at the same rate and if the projections are wrong, they won't find themselves short. If the projections are right, they can issue another refund.
While games is not an area where open-source has been very successful yet, it IS possible to open-source your game AND still sell it.
Most of the game discussions along this line tend to fall into the category that the source to the game is available, but the artwork/sounds/levels etc that make the game unique are not, and the user pays for those.
Quake is not the same game as Hexen, Half-Life or Counter-Strike. Releasing the source code to Quake (as John Carmack has done) means people can use that source-code to build their own games, yes, but they have to design their own levels, draw their own textures, build their own models, etc. These things are not open-source, and you can charge for them, while still giving the source to your game away.
Many companies have made money selling level packs using freely available tools. The consumer buys the pre-built levels because it's more convenient than making those levels themselves.
On the other hand, the single most popular game on the Internet right now is Counter-strike and while it's not open-source it IS free (as in beer), and that doesn't seem to be hurting the developer much. Ad hits on his web page, revenue from the box version, etc, seem to be doing pretty good, even from a game you can get for free.
But your point might be right, YOU might not be able to make money by giving your code away, but good programmers clearly can.
[blockquote]What gold? The guy was right. You cannot make a profit off an item that is free. [/blockquote]
Tell that to Evian. Or Perrier.
To be honest, I thought that was one of Bob Youngs better insights. Water is pretty much free everywhere in the industrialized world, yet here are companies making money selling water. How do they do it? They have better water.
Tie that with the Cluetrain and you discover that the companies that will succeed are those that have a good product that grows and evolves as their customers need, rather than as they feel it should. A company that works WITH the community, rather than stomping on it, trying to lock it in or gouge money from it.
The market is changing. The industry is changing. It's sometimes difficult to see that from inside, but rules and guidelines that worked 20 years ago are not guaranteed to work 20 years from now. Microsoft has managed to reinvent itself many times to adapt to those changes. The question is if they can adapt to this one as well.
This guy's lack of understanding about the fundamental concepts behind Open Source Software is almost painful.
How do you miss the fact that it's about Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Beer? Isn't that repeated so many times, over and over again, from thousands of directions?
Isn't this the point where Richard Stallman points out that you've misunderstood the differences between Open Source and Free Software?
The Open Source movement isn't about Free Speech at all, but rather about the fact that Open Source software can be better because multiple people can improve it, and better quality software has an economic advantage (there's that "make money" thing again) over lesser quality software.
It seems to me that Corel was never interested in Free Software, but only the economic advantage of Open Source, and in fact that this is precisely the type of confusion that RMS was trying to prevent by insisting on the name Free Software, and clarifying that at every conceivable opportunity (not that I'm in any way qualified to speak for RMS).
So Corel isn't rejecting "Free, as in speech" Software, as they never accepted it in the first place. They are, instead, rejecting Open Source (and Burney did use the term correctly), which doesn't have the same "Free, as in speech" requirement.
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The users left their Tivo connected to a phone line so it could dial in and set it's clock. It does that daily. It doesn't get program guide information in these calls, but it DOES get upgrades (apparently).
Tivo did change their SOFTWARE, as they reserve the right to do (it's in the user manual).
In any case, your argument makes no sense. They admit it was a MISTAKE. An overlooked side effect of new code intended for new machines. You say it makes no sense because they should think about lost sales from word of mouth, but how do you plan for word of mouth for a mistake you didn't know you'd made?
Is Tivo really the first software company ever to make a mistake in a release?
C'mon guys, why do you HAVE to have a conspiracy EVERYWHERE? Are you really that paranoid? It's not like this is the first software release in the history of computing that bugs or unintended side effects, is it?
Tivos are nearly useless without the service anyway. There are less than 200,000 total sold. There's a small handful of people not using them with the service. They have ALWAYS said that they were going to eliminate the functionality of new units without the service, just as your cell phone won't work without a service, or your beeper. This isn't a change. So they started adding those things into 2.01 that would make the newer units more reliant on the service and nobody noticed that they would also affect the un-subscribed. Inadequate testing? Perhaps. Malicious intent? Not when they are doing now exactly what they told us they would do all along. Six months ago we were told that "new machines that ship with 2.01 will be more limited in what they can do without the service, but those machines that shipped with 1.3 will keep the abilities they have now" and guess what? That's exactly what they are doing. It's not hidden, it's not a conspiracy, they TOLD us what the plan was. They have a few bugs in the new software that make it less usable for those without the service, but they are going to fix those. Show me any significant program without bugs. We've been running Sendmail on the net for 20 years, is it bug free yet? Is it even security hole free yet? How about BIND? Apache? Linux? FreeBSD? Any of them 100% free of bugs?
Of course not. And now that we make consumer electronics with computers, we are likely to see similar bugs throughout their existence as well.
30-second skip was not a feature. Tivo never claimed they had it. If you bought a unit based on functionality that the manufacturer insisted the product didn't have, just in hopes that you can trick it into doing it somehow, then you are pretty much an idiot and deserve what you get.
So, you guys can get over it. The election results were correct. George Bush won, even when the complete recount is tallied. But aren't you glad we didn't have to wait until April to learn who would be President?
"This is a radio I purchased" [Show a radio]
"This is a radio I built from directions." [Show a radio hand-built, or from one of those Radio Shack kits]. "Both radios allows me to access copyrighted works. In fact, they decrypt them from their current form of oscillations of radio waves into audible sound so that I may listen to them. This is perfectly legal."
"This is a CD containing PowerDVD, a DVD Player, which I purchased." [Show PowerDVD CD]
"This is a CD containing a DVD Player which I built from directions." [Show a CD containing DeCSS]. "Both DVD Players allows me to access copyrighted works. In fact they decrypt them from their current form of microscopic depressions in the DVD surface into audio and video so that I may watch and listen to them."
"I can give you the radio I built. I can build more and sell them if I choose, or give them away for free. But I can't give you the DVD player I built. I should be able to. I shouldn't have to be a giant corporation to be able to build a DVD player and give it away or sell it. "
Must be a slow news day. Quick! Send in a submission about IPv4 running out of numbers unless we do something about it!
You can't forget that "trucks" are sold under different rules than "cars", meaning that car dealers have more flexibility in selling a truck and can offer incentives that they cannot offer with cars. They have different fuel requirements and even different financing requirements. Car dealers like selling trucks, it's easier. Trucks are popular all over the south, not just in Texas (though the gunrack is optional in the rest of the south ).
In the DirecTivo, which is the direct competitor to UltimateTV, since both require a DirecTV source, there are 2 tuners built in. Tivo has not activated the second tuner in it's software. Tivo hope to have an update this summer that will enable the second tuner.
I had read the article and I did mean my comments to address the blocking of email. I don't really have enough information to have formed a cogent opinion on the blocking of whole subnets (you can hardly call the editorial unslanted), and have mixed feelings about it, so didn't want to address it directly. My initial reaction is that I don't like the idea, but you also have to look at the real impact. If there are only 7 backbone providers in the world and all 7 subscribed, what happens then? Would we all be mad because half the net just disappeared, or would we all be happy because we could no longer be bothered by unsecured mail servers and spamweare sites, and the people sending the spam would see such a massive drop off on their return that they might actually stop? And when the half the net that disappeared came back because they cleaned up their act, would that be a better net than the one we have now? Is the short term pain worth the long term gain? Is the long term gain even possible? These are not simple questions, but certainly deserve consideration.
Thanks for pointing out my omission, though. I need to be more complete when posting.
Another point I want to add is that RBL works. I once worked for an ISP that refused to secure their mail server, because it meant the pointy head bosses might actually have to understand how their mail works when they were travelling. They ran for a year that way, against advice, and then one day popped up on the RBL list and started getting complaints. Problem fixed in about a day. The Sys Admin had to work his butt off to fix the relay, but he got it up and got off the RBL within a couple days. And he understood the net better afterwards.
Or, we could just offer training classes and require tests that demonstrate competency before you are allowed to use one alone.
We do it for cars, why is it wrong for computers?
And, of course, we all know what happens if you say "bomb" or "gun" in an airport.
And let us not forget UNIX itself. AT&T didn't ask Ritchie and Thompson to invent a new operating system, they did it on their own, because they were interested in it. AT&T was legally prohibited from making a profit off of computer systems at that time and for decades afterwards, yet Linux and BSD both owe their existence to the development of UNIX at AT&T labs.
That's why we have news stories with such enlightening headlines as "2 Americans killed as jumbo jet crashes leaving no survivors". We forget that people from other countries can have value too!
Sometimes we are so ameri-centric that it's hard to imagine that the rest of the world doesn't exist just for holiday destinations and cheap imports (oh, yeah, and a market for products too important to stop making but too dangerous for Americans to consume...like tobacco).
Actually, the Episode IV: A New Hope title was not added until the re-release AFTER Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. In fact, there was much confusion when Empire opened with Episode V and many casual moviegoers wandering around wondering where episodes 2,3, and 4 had gone (assuming Star Wars to be episode 1). Lucas had explained that he always wanted it to be part of a trilogy, but that he had had so much trouble getting financing and had no idea how successful it would be (there were articles announcing it would be the greatest dud of all time), that he had left the subtitle off, in case he could only make the one. As we all know, it turned out bigger than anyone expected, and he was able to make the sequels and add the Episode IV: A New Hope title when re-released. There were other subtle changes. Obi-wan, when first meeting Luke and being told that R2-D2 claimed to belong to him originally said "I don't recall ever owning a droid. Leastways not one of these modern ones." The "modern" line was removed for the first re-release after Lucas had decided the entire storyline would be told from the perspective of the droids, and so R2-D2 couldn't be a modern droid, if he were to be in Episodes 1, 2 and 3. And in case you wonder what my source is: it's me. I saw these films on their first run release, over and over and over. The interviews with Lucas were mostly taken from Starlog magazine, which we devoured for any information about the upcoming movie, long before we had a World Wide Web. I knew "The Empire Strikes Back" was Episode V when I went to the first showing in town, but most of the other people who were there did not, and there was a loud outcy of confusion when the opening scroll went by. It was several YEARS after "Star Wars" premiered that the film contained "Episode IV: A New Hope", though Lucas had always wanted it to be part of a serial (like the Saturday afternoon serials of his youth).
What happens when "reboot the server" doesn't solve it? He's an ISP with a multimillion dollar contract. That means he needs to be dealing in throughput analysis and probably such things as BGP and OSPF. Salesguy who can click through menu items isn't going to be able to deal with that. "Only needs to keep the system running most of the time" is the key though. How bad is it to be down? How bad is it to be down for a day or 2 days or a week while he figures out that the DNS is misconfigured and sent a bad update upstream (and oh yeah, even if he fixes it immediately it won't propagate from the root server until 6 am tomorrow)? How much downtime is acceptable in your business? The answer to that determines the level of an administrator you need.
Actually, you were licensing the use of software that had a freeze-frame function. If it were hardware, they couldn't take it away (in fact, the button remains). Since software is not sold in this country, but instead licensed for use, you technically have nothing. The hardware that you own remains the same. The company that you licensed the software from has no obligation to continue licensing that software to you, however, they are (apparently) willing to license (at the same terms, amazingly) similar software to you.
I bet you also insist that Television programming should be free, right? That ad paid for the program, it's hardly needless. Tivo, ReplayTV and their ilk are changing the rules, but the broadcasters still need to make money in order to make TV shows. You will pay for them, somehow.
Well, yes, but that's only true if the source is closed. If the source to that touchscreen application is open, then many other programmers will be able to look at it and SEE if it's compromised, or if the vote actually DOES go into the computer the way it appears on the Touch Screen.
Nice of them to be making our case for us, don't you think?
Download the source for free, but the binaries cost money? Sure, somebody will post the binary somewhere, but a large number of users will simply not find the WAREZ version and pay for the binary version (how many Windows users do you think could compile Quake3?)
The advanced users will download the source and compile it themselves, but I bet a lot of people would pay (a reasonable fee) for the pre-compiled version, especially if you could get it optimized for your processor and operating system.
That's just one way to make money. There are others. The fact that you can't think of any simply shows a lack of imagination, not an indication that there aren't any.
In addition, it doesn't change the tax structure so the government continues collecting the taxes at the same rate and if the projections are wrong, they won't find themselves short. If the projections are right, they can issue another refund.
While games is not an area where open-source has been very successful yet, it IS possible to open-source your game AND still sell it.
Most of the game discussions along this line tend to fall into the category that the source to the game is available, but the artwork/sounds/levels etc that make the game unique are not, and the user pays for those.
Quake is not the same game as Hexen, Half-Life or Counter-Strike. Releasing the source code to Quake (as John Carmack has done) means people can use that source-code to build their own games, yes, but they have to design their own levels, draw their own textures, build their own models, etc. These things are not open-source, and you can charge for them, while still giving the source to your game away.
Many companies have made money selling level packs using freely available tools. The consumer buys the pre-built levels because it's more convenient than making those levels themselves.
On the other hand, the single most popular game on the Internet right now is Counter-strike and while it's not open-source it IS free (as in beer), and that doesn't seem to be hurting the developer much. Ad hits on his web page, revenue from the box version, etc, seem to be doing pretty good, even from a game you can get for free.
But your point might be right, YOU might not be able to make money by giving your code away, but good programmers clearly can.
Tell that to Evian. Or Perrier.
To be honest, I thought that was one of Bob Youngs better insights. Water is pretty much free everywhere in the industrialized world, yet here are companies making money selling water. How do they do it? They have better water.
Tie that with the Cluetrain and you discover that the companies that will succeed are those that have a good product that grows and evolves as their customers need, rather than as they feel it should. A company that works WITH the community, rather than stomping on it, trying to lock it in or gouge money from it.
The market is changing. The industry is changing. It's sometimes difficult to see that from inside, but rules and guidelines that worked 20 years ago are not guaranteed to work 20 years from now. Microsoft has managed to reinvent itself many times to adapt to those changes. The question is if they can adapt to this one as well.
How do you miss the fact that it's about Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Beer? Isn't that repeated so many times, over and over again, from thousands of directions?
Isn't this the point where Richard Stallman points out that you've misunderstood the differences between Open Source and Free Software?
The Open Source movement isn't about Free Speech at all, but rather about the fact that Open Source software can be better because multiple people can improve it, and better quality software has an economic advantage (there's that "make money" thing again) over lesser quality software.
It seems to me that Corel was never interested in Free Software, but only the economic advantage of Open Source, and in fact that this is precisely the type of confusion that RMS was trying to prevent by insisting on the name Free Software, and clarifying that at every conceivable opportunity (not that I'm in any way qualified to speak for RMS).
So Corel isn't rejecting "Free, as in speech" Software, as they never accepted it in the first place. They are, instead, rejecting Open Source (and Burney did use the term correctly), which doesn't have the same "Free, as in speech" requirement.