It's worthwhile to question the longevity of any business model. Remember the dot-com boom, where the fundamentals of the businesses were flawed?
Anyway, I think that the dual-licensing model is a good one, and serves the two sides well. It's not that dissimilar to what often happens with software outside of that world.
I know people who have paid for services for their web sites (eg circulation list management) which they could have downloaded a perl script for, installed, set permissions and tweaked. But they were happy to spend the $x per annum using someone else's.
A lot of people won't want to compile kernels, install software or change code. They'll pay someone to do it for them. Sometimes, that will be IBM or likewise, but at other times it might be a 2 man software house.
Ireland was known as the "Celtic Tiger" for a few years. Well, those EU subsidies are about to run out as Ireland is moved out of poor status. Wonder what will happen to a lot of the businesses that moved there?
The EU certainly didn't mind about region coding in DVD players, and are quite fine about restricting trade as long as it's not within the EU. In other words, if the region coding was such that Italy and the UK were in different regions, there would be trouble.
Chirac has been elected by popular majority, using one of the best electoral systems available. That makes him the Head of State, with no "so-called" about it. Your opinions do not alter that fact.
I could give many reasons why Bush is an unfit person to hold office, particularly of a nation with nuclear weapons. However, I do recognise that he is the Head of State of the USA.
Are you suggesting that the electoral system of France is corrupt or that the elections were invalid?
What's really at play is that some economies may prefer to see their money on government systems spent on local companies.
What's better for your economy? Spending money on foreign jobs, or your own jobs? Even if it costs fractionally more, some of that fraction will be returned as taxation/local spending.
I don't see how this means that OSS is going to succeed, it just seems like a fact. Anyhow RMS was doing Free Software using tapes and the USPS long before the Internet came along.
And how quickly did it move? If I want a library now, I can be informed about it, download it, install it and be going with it in a matter of minutes and at near 0 cost.
The closer the supporting structures of Open Source are to zero cost, the more they break proprietary companies advantage.
I'm using a PDF library which is proprietary because it does most of what I need, but in an inelegant manner.
I'm now looking into taking an OSS licensed piece of code and modifying it for the changes we need. I guess the company who we bought the proprietary library from could modify it, but that's going to cost us big bucks.
I've been to a few sites that don't render properly. I do something simple - write to them and tell them to start rendering properly, and I'll start giving them business.
Internet banks seem to have a bad reputation, but I bank with two that work just fine, so all that encryption don't matter. If either of them stopped working with Mozilla, I'd seriously think of switching elsewhere.
On French TV, ads for shower gel and tanning products often show nipples, whether in the daytime or at night.
In the UK, the Janet Jackson incident was basically shown on TV. I know no-one who thought it shocking. Most people understood it was a stunt (which worked).
Actually, Britain isn't a particularly religious or censorious nation. We used to be, but from the 1960s to the 1990s, we became more liberal. The Church of England may have a link to the state, but it's generally quite a liberal church.
If Janet Jackson had pulled her little stunt here, people would have thought it interesting for like 5 minutes, maybe even a bit sad. There certainly wouldn't have been questions in the house.
We produced TV series like Queer as Folk, The Singing Detective and The Buddha of Suburbia. Basically, you can't show erections on TV, penetrative sex or details of female genitalia. The word "cunt" is considered pretty dangerous territory. But that's about it.
Saying that, I think Blair might send us in your direction if we're not careful.
Personally, I think it's great, but always in technology comes the "not much better" principal. People haven't replaced CDs because the other technologies like MiniDisc, DCC, DAT are not much better. The music industry are going to have to produce something really spectacular to get people off either DVDs or CDs now. DVD has a chance - when high-definition comes out. The biggest problem for people listening to CDs isn't the CD, it's the quality of equipment.
Well, if they don't pay for it, there will probably still be people in Iceland using OSS software on the basis of "well we've already got an operating system running fine in Icelandic, thanks but we won't go through another load of work to do the translation for you".
Net result: people in Iceland (and others) remain on OSS. They make OSS work for them. People around the world say "oh, so they can make OSS work".
Each of the OSS cases is a danger to Microsoft, whether it is Munich Council, Ernie Ball or whoever. Each case that proves you can run a business without Microsoft and on a free, customisable operating system is a major threat.
Remember also that language is very political. Many big businesses have to go out of their way to print bills in Welsh as well as English, even though demand is quite small.
Microsoft would be wise to spend a few million on getting their major packages translated to at least all languages spoken by 100,000+ people in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
And from someone living in the UK, I have to order from the US and incur huge shipping charges (and potentially customs/VAT/customs handling charges). I have the same problem with ThinkGeek.
Absolutely. I used to run a blog and built a couple of sites for a couple of people. The sites cost those people less than $1000 each. How much is the license price for SQL Server?
Re:Alternative search engines
on
In Google We Trust
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
NB: From the UK
Some things are fantastic on google/google groups. Searching for technical answers, and often general searching.
Some things work less well for me, often because of the linkfarm pond scum. Searching for say a type of shop in a particular town often isn't as good as Yell. For fact finding, I often use Wikipedia. For movie info, I go straight to the IMDB.
For a search engine, though, I've yet to find anything better.
Remember Space Invaders? And how many "aliens in rows shooting downward at rocket" games were there afterwards because people couldn't think outside of that?
After Manic Miner came out on the ZX Spectrum, you couldn't move for platform games.
3d shooters like Doom and Quake were great, but that's all we seem to get sold in the arcade game market now.
Is there someone out there making anything as revolutionary as Lemmings or Elite any more?
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, I think that the dual-licensing model is a good one, and serves the two sides well. It's not that dissimilar to what often happens with software outside of that world.
I know people who have paid for services for their web sites (eg circulation list management) which they could have downloaded a perl script for, installed, set permissions and tweaked. But they were happy to spend the $x per annum using someone else's.
A lot of people won't want to compile kernels, install software or change code. They'll pay someone to do it for them. Sometimes, that will be IBM or likewise, but at other times it might be a 2 man software house.
Ireland was known as the "Celtic Tiger" for a few years. Well, those EU subsidies are about to run out as Ireland is moved out of poor status. Wonder what will happen to a lot of the businesses that moved there?
I've also heard of people spending thousands in the USA, only to find all their savings wiped out by excess baggage and customs charges.
It's also wrong to bomb civilians just to keep your military body bag count down.
Isn't it a bit sad that the US spends so much on defence, and yet has a pretty small healthcare system?
For that, we killed how many thousands of civilians with bombing?
The EU certainly didn't mind about region coding in DVD players, and are quite fine about restricting trade as long as it's not within the EU. In other words, if the region coding was such that Italy and the UK were in different regions, there would be trouble.
I could give many reasons why Bush is an unfit person to hold office, particularly of a nation with nuclear weapons. However, I do recognise that he is the Head of State of the USA.
Are you suggesting that the electoral system of France is corrupt or that the elections were invalid?
NOT even "Anti-Microsoft".
What's really at play is that some economies may prefer to see their money on government systems spent on local companies.
What's better for your economy? Spending money on foreign jobs, or your own jobs? Even if it costs fractionally more, some of that fraction will be returned as taxation/local spending.
I don't see how this means that OSS is going to succeed, it just seems like a fact. Anyhow RMS was doing Free Software using tapes and the USPS long before the Internet came along.
And how quickly did it move? If I want a library now, I can be informed about it, download it, install it and be going with it in a matter of minutes and at near 0 cost.
The closer the supporting structures of Open Source are to zero cost, the more they break proprietary companies advantage.
Chirac is the democratically elected President of France, incidentally using a far better system than most of the world.
I'm now looking into taking an OSS licensed piece of code and modifying it for the changes we need. I guess the company who we bought the proprietary library from could modify it, but that's going to cost us big bucks.
Internet banks seem to have a bad reputation, but I bank with two that work just fine, so all that encryption don't matter. If either of them stopped working with Mozilla, I'd seriously think of switching elsewhere.
PS Was that in the Sun JVM or the Microsoft JVM?
Considering how much code is in VBA in people's systems, I can't see that one happening.
I'm wondering how Britain changed to have such liberal broadcasting rules, and the US have gone the other way.
In the UK, the Janet Jackson incident was basically shown on TV. I know no-one who thought it shocking. Most people understood it was a stunt (which worked).
If Janet Jackson had pulled her little stunt here, people would have thought it interesting for like 5 minutes, maybe even a bit sad. There certainly wouldn't have been questions in the house.
We produced TV series like Queer as Folk, The Singing Detective and The Buddha of Suburbia. Basically, you can't show erections on TV, penetrative sex or details of female genitalia. The word "cunt" is considered pretty dangerous territory. But that's about it.
Saying that, I think Blair might send us in your direction if we're not careful.
When she can drink beer out of the can, lift cars and hit/give the finger to hells angels.
Personally, I think it's great, but always in technology comes the "not much better" principal. People haven't replaced CDs because the other technologies like MiniDisc, DCC, DAT are not much better. The music industry are going to have to produce something really spectacular to get people off either DVDs or CDs now. DVD has a chance - when high-definition comes out. The biggest problem for people listening to CDs isn't the CD, it's the quality of equipment.
Net result: people in Iceland (and others) remain on OSS. They make OSS work for them. People around the world say "oh, so they can make OSS work".
Each of the OSS cases is a danger to Microsoft, whether it is Munich Council, Ernie Ball or whoever. Each case that proves you can run a business without Microsoft and on a free, customisable operating system is a major threat.
Remember also that language is very political. Many big businesses have to go out of their way to print bills in Welsh as well as English, even though demand is quite small.
Microsoft would be wise to spend a few million on getting their major packages translated to at least all languages spoken by 100,000+ people in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
And from someone living in the UK, I have to order from the US and incur huge shipping charges (and potentially customs/VAT/customs handling charges). I have the same problem with ThinkGeek.
Maybe I should get in touch with Mozilla?
Absolutely. I used to run a blog and built a couple of sites for a couple of people. The sites cost those people less than $1000 each. How much is the license price for SQL Server?
Some things are fantastic on google/google groups. Searching for technical answers, and often general searching.
Some things work less well for me, often because of the linkfarm pond scum. Searching for say a type of shop in a particular town often isn't as good as Yell. For fact finding, I often use Wikipedia. For movie info, I go straight to the IMDB.
For a search engine, though, I've yet to find anything better.
Remember Space Invaders? And how many "aliens in rows shooting downward at rocket" games were there afterwards because people couldn't think outside of that?
After Manic Miner came out on the ZX Spectrum, you couldn't move for platform games.
3d shooters like Doom and Quake were great, but that's all we seem to get sold in the arcade game market now.
Is there someone out there making anything as revolutionary as Lemmings or Elite any more?