I believe that I made a passing reference to something essential for the consumer-only software market -- games, card programs, etc. -- which is consumer organizations. Of course it's true that for this model to work for consumer software, all of the money must be available (or at least guaranteed somehow) up front. To this end, I believe that organizations would form from groups of people interested in particular software projects. Once the interest is there, then the organization purchases the software development on behalf of its members, who each pay a small fraction of the overall cost.
To answer in advance the question of incentive, I believe that people will be willing to pay, even if the software becomes available for free immediately afterward, simply because it does not yet exist. They can either wait for someone else to pay, or contribute themselves. Contributors have some say in the specifications, and are the first to receive the finished product. They also would receive technical support for the software after development is completed. If it were impossible sell to an audience capable of getting a similar product freely, then Microsoft would be out business by now, at least in the consumer market. The "home user" is the group _most_ suited to switch, because for the most common tasks (email, word processing, Internet, some Windows apps using WINE), Linux is "good enough" to compete. I've used Linux on my home system for 4 years now, and although I would consider myself to know more about computers than the average home user, I've never had any trouble whatsoever doing any of those four things. Linux with KDE is not much harder than the Mac OS X interface, and my sister (definately not as interested in computers as myself) has no trouble with OS X. In fact, she used a Debian Linux box for a while (that I set up), and had no trouble that wasn't due to the computer being old and unreliable. Linux is/ready/ to compete. So why is Windows so popular?
We haven't seen many such organization thus far because software companies have been willing to take all of the risks involved in designing the software for a mostly-unknown future market. Require payment up front and unrestricted distribution, and such organizations would form on their own. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have a "seed" organization, or individual, to encourage such groups to form and help them get started.
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I meant that the software industry is one of the only ones that is not exclusively marketed as a service. I am aware that software companies already exist which work as I propose -- I was addressing the remainder.
I disagree. While software has not been seen as a service until recently, I believe it has more potential for good as a service industry than it ever did as a product industry.
When producing a product, it is necessary to predict what will sell on the open market for the best margin. This is not always the item most needed. It is not always produced by the best programmers. The product and its quality are determined by groups of individuals interested solely in maximizing the bottom line.
As a service, software would be produced when needed, to meet known requirements planned out in advance. The best team of programmers available will be chosen (for the money those interested are willing to offer -- and they are the ones to choose the cost, since they are the ones needing the software). There are very few "failed products" because the predictions are no longer necessary. In short, the process becomes far more efficient, and the developers end up making money in roughly direct proportion to the quality of their code (and general software development methods, such as staying on schedule) rather than the competence of their marketing department.
OSS is a service "industry". Software is developed, for the most part, because someone wanted it. There was a need for it. Generally, they chose to spend time rather than money to have it developed, having already the necessary skills to develop it themselves or a willingness to learn. They did not worry about what would sell well, or what the market wanted, because those did not matter. The need existed, and they chose to fulfill it. And while many an OSS project did not "succeed" in the market, nearly all accomplished the purposes for which they were written.
The software industry is one of a very few that does/not/ market a service. Even most manufactured products are produced only when ordered -- a request for service. The only difference is that in manufacturing, most of the cost over the lifetime of a product line is in mass production, and can be amortized to the cost per item. In software development, the vast majority of the cost is in the development, which indicates to me that the payment should be for the original development and not for the copies. Once the software has been developed, most often for a corporation but possibly under government contract or for a consumer organization, it could then become public, to be used by anyone.
The software doesn't have to become OSS, of course; it can be held under trade secret (contract law) if the company does not wish the resulting code to be used by its competitors. But in the case, it would be under a service model anyway -- with one copy, there is no difference.
Here's a reasonable proposal to facilitate the decline of software patents, and/or enchance the public domain: allow copyright, patent, or trade secret (pick one). Software copyrights and patents require a WORKING COPY OF THE CODE, to be held in confidence by the Copyright Office until the copyright expires. For patents, a reference implementation must be provided, which would immediately become public domain. Of course, this exact implementation cannot be used until the patent expires without violating the patent, but it can be distributed freely and derivative works can be made from it that do not themselves violate the patent.
By doing this, we guarantee that, eventually, a usable version will be available. Companies might choose to just copyright their implementation rather than giving a working version to the public after ~7 years. (That is the term of a patent, right?) We would then be free to reverse-engineer it and make an alternate implementation without worrying about patents.
The main problem with this is the (common) case where something is composed of several different patents. It might be necessary to enforce a strict separation -- each patent must be a distinct component. I also say that the copyright term should be shorter, even with these modifications, and it should not be possible to copyright something not created by a human, such as machine code, or an intentionally crippled work, such as artificially-obfuscated code. Machine code should, instead, be considered a "derivative work" of a specific version of the copyrighted, human-written source code, and subject to the same restrictions provided the source is actually under copyright.
A good analogy is telling picasso that you only want the top half of his painting for half the price.
With a painting (or any other "physical" work), you could partner with someone who preferred the lower half, split the cost, and then divide the painting after the sale. With digital media, the distributors insist that each person owning a part of the album must pay full price up front (expected), but tracks from the album cannot be resold individually.
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I believe that I made a passing reference to something essential for the consumer-only software market -- games, card programs, etc. -- which is consumer organizations. Of course it's true that for this model to work for consumer software, all of the money must be available (or at least guaranteed somehow) up front. To this end, I believe that organizations would form from groups of people interested in particular software projects. Once the interest is there, then the organization purchases the software development on behalf of its members, who each pay a small fraction of the overall cost.
/ready/ to compete. So why is Windows so popular?
To answer in advance the question of incentive, I believe that people will be willing to pay, even if the software becomes available for free immediately afterward, simply because it does not yet exist. They can either wait for someone else to pay, or contribute themselves. Contributors have some say in the specifications, and are the first to receive the finished product. They also would receive technical support for the software after development is completed. If it were impossible sell to an audience capable of getting a similar product freely, then Microsoft would be out business by now, at least in the consumer market. The "home user" is the group _most_ suited to switch, because for the most common tasks (email, word processing, Internet, some Windows apps using WINE), Linux is "good enough" to compete. I've used Linux on my home system for 4 years now, and although I would consider myself to know more about computers than the average home user, I've never had any trouble whatsoever doing any of those four things. Linux with KDE is not much harder than the Mac OS X interface, and my sister (definately not as interested in computers as myself) has no trouble with OS X. In fact, she used a Debian Linux box for a while (that I set up), and had no trouble that wasn't due to the computer being old and unreliable. Linux is
We haven't seen many such organization thus far because software companies have been willing to take all of the risks involved in designing the software for a mostly-unknown future market. Require payment up front and unrestricted distribution, and such organizations would form on their own. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have a "seed" organization, or individual, to encourage such groups to form and help them get started.
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I meant that the software industry is one of the only ones that is not exclusively marketed as a service. I am aware that software companies already exist which work as I propose -- I was addressing the remainder.
I disagree. While software has not been seen as a service until recently, I believe it has more potential for good as a service industry than it ever did as a product industry.
/not/ market a service. Even most manufactured products are produced only when ordered -- a request for service. The only difference is that in manufacturing, most of the cost over the lifetime of a product line is in mass production, and can be amortized to the cost per item. In software development, the vast majority of the cost is in the development, which indicates to me that the payment should be for the original development and not for the copies. Once the software has been developed, most often for a corporation but possibly under government contract or for a consumer organization, it could then become public, to be used by anyone.
When producing a product, it is necessary to predict what will sell on the open market for the best margin. This is not always the item most needed. It is not always produced by the best programmers. The product and its quality are determined by groups of individuals interested solely in maximizing the bottom line.
As a service, software would be produced when needed, to meet known requirements planned out in advance. The best team of programmers available will be chosen (for the money those interested are willing to offer -- and they are the ones to choose the cost, since they are the ones needing the software). There are very few "failed products" because the predictions are no longer necessary. In short, the process becomes far more efficient, and the developers end up making money in roughly direct proportion to the quality of their code (and general software development methods, such as staying on schedule) rather than the competence of their marketing department.
OSS is a service "industry". Software is developed, for the most part, because someone wanted it. There was a need for it. Generally, they chose to spend time rather than money to have it developed, having already the necessary skills to develop it themselves or a willingness to learn. They did not worry about what would sell well, or what the market wanted, because those did not matter. The need existed, and they chose to fulfill it. And while many an OSS project did not "succeed" in the market, nearly all accomplished the purposes for which they were written.
The software industry is one of a very few that does
The software doesn't have to become OSS, of course; it can be held under trade secret (contract law) if the company does not wish the resulting code to be used by its competitors. But in the case, it would be under a service model anyway -- with one copy, there is no difference.
Here's a reasonable proposal to facilitate the decline of software patents, and/or enchance the public domain: allow copyright, patent, or trade secret (pick one). Software copyrights and patents require a WORKING COPY OF THE CODE, to be held in confidence by the Copyright Office until the copyright expires. For patents, a reference implementation must be provided, which would immediately become public domain. Of course, this exact implementation cannot be used until the patent expires without violating the patent, but it can be distributed freely and derivative works can be made from it that do not themselves violate the patent.
By doing this, we guarantee that, eventually, a usable version will be available. Companies might choose to just copyright their implementation rather than giving a working version to the public after ~7 years. (That is the term of a patent, right?) We would then be free to reverse-engineer it and make an alternate implementation without worrying about patents.
The main problem with this is the (common) case where something is composed of several different patents. It might be necessary to enforce a strict separation -- each patent must be a distinct component. I also say that the copyright term should be shorter, even with these modifications, and it should not be possible to copyright something not created by a human, such as machine code, or an intentionally crippled work, such as artificially-obfuscated code. Machine code should, instead, be considered a "derivative work" of a specific version of the copyrighted, human-written source code, and subject to the same restrictions provided the source is actually under copyright.
With a painting (or any other "physical" work), you could partner with someone who preferred the lower half, split the cost, and then divide the painting after the sale. With digital media, the distributors insist that each person owning a part of the album must pay full price up front (expected), but tracks from the album cannot be resold individually.