You say FOSS is good for the users. That's true. Unfortunately that's only 1/2 of the story. FOSS is NOT good for software developers - especially big ones. I can't justify to the board pushing $5m into development of a new system unless they KNOW that the company will make it's money back. And that's really hard if I release my source to everyone before we reach break-even, because others can under-cut me in the market.
So that's the point of the article - in a capitalistic environment you will always have closed software.
This is typical. I know Slashdot = 'Ooh I love OSS and Linux and fluffy bunnies' but really - why are posts like the parent here modded down just because they have a different point of view?
Speak for yourself.
I don't know about personal use of PCs, but for my business I would LOVE paying subscription fees rather than outright buying software. Why?
1) No big up-front expense
2) Easy to scale up or down with staff turnover
3) No need to worry about upgrades / patches
etc
This is happening in many areas already. Sure it will be a while before MS Word.net or whatever will become feasible, but that does not mean it won't happpen. Given enough time it will, without a doubt.
The reason (as I said mr ADD) that such an app does not exist is because IE is too shite to allow it.
MS knows that in the near future broadband will be ubiqitous and they know that a good enough browser will open pandora's box.
Just because it does not exist now does not mean it's not on the horizon. Don't say it won't happen because local apps are intrinsicly better. They're only better because 1) lack of bandwith and 2) lack of a good enough browser. Both of those things will be addressed in the coming years, mark my word. If you can't see it then just wait.
Yawn.
This is already happening. Gmail is better than Outlook in most respects already. Many other apps are now being built as web-apps. Give it some time and I can guarantee you'll find all the important apps in a web-app flavour.
1) Web apps have many good features over traditional apps. Examples:
- Cannot be pirated
- Can be accessed anywhere
- Easy to upgrade
- etc. Thus they will happen and in many cases are happening right now.
2) They only need to open Office files and have enough functionality, and most users will find them perfectly usable. I'm a power-user but most of Office's features I never use.
3) No need to be cross-platform as the browser will BE the platform. Duh.
4) No need to be free, they can be adware, subscriptionware or anything that's cheaper than Office.
5) They only need to be compatible with 95% of the browser market, which means IE and FireFox.
And then MS will start to lose it's grip on the market because it can't force users on a specific platform anymore.
Yeah. Improving software within their OS [that would only make their OS more appealing to customers] is definitly digging their own grave.
Yes, because if IE (being the standard) can run these cool web-apps, you'll soon have other browsers with the same capabilities. And then you'll have replacements for Office apps that runs on Linux, because all you need is a compatible browser. And THEN you can start switching to non-MS platforms without worrying. When web-apps become as good as native apps, MS can kiss it's monopoly goodbye - and they won't be able to leverage Windows to push their $$$ apps.
MS makes most of it's money from Windows and Office. If they lose Windows and Office they can shut down shop. So they must do whatever they can to protect the income from those 2 areas, and specifically Office because Windows is nothing without Office for the average user.
Now the problem with the web is that browser-based apps (think gmail) threatens Office and by extention Windows. We live in a time where bandwith is cheap and fast enough to run a high-quality spreadsheet or word processor as a web application. The ONLY thing stopping this from happening is the pitiful state of IE. If they made IE as good as it can be, they'll be opening the floodgates for web-apps that can replace Office.
If IE matures enough for this to happen, all applications can be web-based and run off ANY COMPATIBLE BROWSER on ANY PLATFORM. Thus I can move my grandma to Linux with Firefox 3.0 and she won't even know that something has changed, because she was already accessing all her apps via a browser. This can also happen if Firefox becomes the de-facto standard browser, and they start implementing all these new and great standards that's waiting to unleash the power of the web-app.
So that's why IE has changed almost nothing since the monopoly. MS realises that improving it is digging their own grave.
My company develops software for a specific vertical market. All web-based. It's great for our clients because they can access their data from anywhere, any time. It's great for us because we can upgrade and improve the system whenever we feel like it without sending out upgrade disks. 90% of all support calls we take right now is because of IE (spyware / 'special' toolbars). Lately we've been installing Firefox for all clients when training them, and that's helped a lot.
So all we can hope for right now is for Firefox to improve their browser as much as possible to try to become the standard (60% of the market would do it I think) before Longhorn. I don't know what MS plans for a browser in Longhorn, but I know it will be bad for all other browsers.
You can argue your 'superior morals' or whatever you want to call it all you like. The fact is that for the big, successful proprietry software houses out there Free software will NEVER catch on. Having ALL software Free is just not realistic.
Consider this:
Let's say I'm the CEO of Adobe. My engineers tell me that (for $5 million) they can develop an awesome software package. Let's call it 'Photoshop'. Now I know from market research that I can sell Photoshop for about $200 to enough users to recover the $5m and to make a bit of profit. But what if I was forced to make this software Free? I'll sell maybe a few hundred copies, and everyone else will just copy if from those people. Now I have to try to make back my $5m by supporting the software, but soon other companies starts undercutting my support fees (because they don't have the $5m to recover) and I can't compete on that anymore either. And other companies start selling Photoshop for $2 via download - so I have no more income.
How would Photoshop ever exist in suck a world? What about other packages that costs millions to develop but can only be sold for a few dollars?
Thus there will always be proprietry software, and I for one like it that way.
I know some of you think that ALL software should be Free. Let's for a moment consider a world where ALL software must be Free by law.
Now let's say I'm CEO of Adobe. My engineers say they can - for about $5 million - develop a really really good software tool. Let's say they want to call it 'Photoshop'. I know from market research that users will be willing to pay about $200 for a copy of 'Photoshop'.
In the world we live in now, I can say 'Yes here's your $5m go develop it' because I know the chances are good that I can sell enough copies for $200 a piece to recover the investment and to make a bit of profit on top.
But in a 'Free' software world I can't do this. The first guy that I sell 'Photoshop' to will upload it to Kazaa and then I can only make money from supporting Photoshop users. Soon other companies will support them for less, and I can't even do that anymore.
So how can I fork out $5m for this software in a Free software world? I don't get it.
Very true. I'm seriously considering changing my email address every year (which would be a bitch) because there's no other way to avoid spam if other people has your email in their contact list.
The best way we have right now to combat spam, is to make it too expensive for the spammers. Today I kept a poor helpdesk person busy for 70 minutes without buying any penis pills.
Um... right. All you can do is check that the domain is valid. You need one of those new (experimental) protocols to check if an ADDRESS is valid. The only way you can currently reliably check for valid email addresses (and not just valid domains) is by actually sending an email and checking if it's accepted. Yes there are protocols in the works that will allow you to check the validity of an email address without doing this, but they're far from universal at this stage. Hence you can't use them because there's a possibility that a legitimate sender does not support these protocols.
Don't talk about stuff you obviously know nothing about. We've also strayed from your original 'idea' of bouncing spam emails. That's still stupid.
If you argue that software should be free, then you should also be in favour of copying music, or movies, and being allowed to modify / sell that movie / music as you like. That makes no sense. It would mean that no artist could make a living from music, and that no studio would make movies.
In the software world that would mean no Adobe would be able to make a Photoshop, simply because they would not recover their costs. How would Adobe survive in your universe? You, sir, are an idiot.
You are indeed. The 0wned zombie machine is the spammer's friend. By emailing trojans to millions of Outlook users I can 1) Get a massive list of valid email addresses and 2) Recruit loads of PCs to spam others.
I don't use my regular email address for anything on the web. Yet I still get spam. Why? Because someone that had my email address in their contact list got 0wned. I get LOTS of spam that's customised with information gathered this way.
The VAST MAJORITY of spam (everything I've recieved in the last few weeks certainly) comes with forged headers. You can do some research if you want. Send all your spam from all your boxes back to the 'sender' for a couple of weeks and see what happens. Answer? NOTHING. Spammers don't maintain mailing lists. They just supplement them. You can kill your email address for months, and when you create it again I guarantee you'l get spam again immediately.
And about your 'if the address is bogus don't read it' comment. Are you saying that I should send a 'Are you real' reply to every email I get from a new address? That would sure piss off my clients. I know some companies that does that, and it's irritating as hell.
Well in my inbox that's a tiny minority of spam. Less than 1%. Doing away with those emails will not make a noticable difference. That's the point of my email - MOST spam are for fly-by-night scams.
Richard Stallman is an idiot. There's nothing ethically wrong with proprietary software. It does NOT hurt your fellow human beings. By his reasoning the formula for Coca-Cola should be public knowledge, the Colonel's 11 herbs and spices should be available to anyone who wants to know, etc. It makes no sense.
Slashdot Mirror
You say FOSS is good for the users. That's true. Unfortunately that's only 1/2 of the story. FOSS is NOT good for software developers - especially big ones. I can't justify to the board pushing $5m into development of a new system unless they KNOW that the company will make it's money back. And that's really hard if I release my source to everyone before we reach break-even, because others can under-cut me in the market.
So that's the point of the article - in a capitalistic environment you will always have closed software.
Care to point out some of the 'lies'? Otherwise you're just trolling.
This is typical. I know Slashdot = 'Ooh I love OSS and Linux and fluffy bunnies' but really - why are posts like the parent here modded down just because they have a different point of view?
Wake up mods.
Speak for yourself. I don't know about personal use of PCs, but for my business I would LOVE paying subscription fees rather than outright buying software. Why? 1) No big up-front expense 2) Easy to scale up or down with staff turnover 3) No need to worry about upgrades / patches etc This is happening in many areas already. Sure it will be a while before MS Word.net or whatever will become feasible, but that does not mean it won't happpen. Given enough time it will, without a doubt.
While the parent might be a troll, it's still worth a look.
I always wondered why you can't get a decent looking properly encoded movie on the web. Now I know why - it's 13 year olds doing it!
The article says that quality if very important. BS I say.
Yawn.
Like I said, duh, such an app cannot exist because writing an app that's not supported in IE would be dumb. You bore me.
The reason (as I said mr ADD) that such an app does not exist is because IE is too shite to allow it. MS knows that in the near future broadband will be ubiqitous and they know that a good enough browser will open pandora's box. Just because it does not exist now does not mean it's not on the horizon. Don't say it won't happen because local apps are intrinsicly better. They're only better because 1) lack of bandwith and 2) lack of a good enough browser. Both of those things will be addressed in the coming years, mark my word. If you can't see it then just wait. Yawn.
This is already happening. Gmail is better than Outlook in most respects already. Many other apps are now being built as web-apps. Give it some time and I can guarantee you'll find all the important apps in a web-app flavour.
1) Web apps have many good features over traditional apps. Examples:
- Cannot be pirated
- Can be accessed anywhere
- Easy to upgrade
- etc.
Thus they will happen and in many cases are happening right now.
2) They only need to open Office files and have enough functionality, and most users will find them perfectly usable. I'm a power-user but most of Office's features I never use.
3) No need to be cross-platform as the browser will BE the platform. Duh.
4) No need to be free, they can be adware, subscriptionware or anything that's cheaper than Office.
5) They only need to be compatible with 95% of the browser market, which means IE and FireFox.
And then MS will start to lose it's grip on the market because it can't force users on a specific platform anymore.
I like drugs thank you.
Pleasure. Always good to help the short-sighted.
Sorry, did I miss something?
Yes, you missed the point.
Yeah. Improving software within their OS [that would only make their OS more appealing to customers] is definitly digging their own grave.
Yes, because if IE (being the standard) can run these cool web-apps, you'll soon have other browsers with the same capabilities. And then you'll have replacements for Office apps that runs on Linux, because all you need is a compatible browser. And THEN you can start switching to non-MS platforms without worrying. When web-apps become as good as native apps, MS can kiss it's monopoly goodbye - and they won't be able to leverage Windows to push their $$$ apps.
MS makes most of it's money from Windows and Office. If they lose Windows and Office they can shut down shop. So they must do whatever they can to protect the income from those 2 areas, and specifically Office because Windows is nothing without Office for the average user.
Now the problem with the web is that browser-based apps (think gmail) threatens Office and by extention Windows. We live in a time where bandwith is cheap and fast enough to run a high-quality spreadsheet or word processor as a web application. The ONLY thing stopping this from happening is the pitiful state of IE. If they made IE as good as it can be, they'll be opening the floodgates for web-apps that can replace Office.
If IE matures enough for this to happen, all applications can be web-based and run off ANY COMPATIBLE BROWSER on ANY PLATFORM. Thus I can move my grandma to Linux with Firefox 3.0 and she won't even know that something has changed, because she was already accessing all her apps via a browser. This can also happen if Firefox becomes the de-facto standard browser, and they start implementing all these new and great standards that's waiting to unleash the power of the web-app.
So that's why IE has changed almost nothing since the monopoly. MS realises that improving it is digging their own grave.
My company develops software for a specific vertical market. All web-based. It's great for our clients because they can access their data from anywhere, any time. It's great for us because we can upgrade and improve the system whenever we feel like it without sending out upgrade disks. 90% of all support calls we take right now is because of IE (spyware / 'special' toolbars). Lately we've been installing Firefox for all clients when training them, and that's helped a lot.
So all we can hope for right now is for Firefox to improve their browser as much as possible to try to become the standard (60% of the market would do it I think) before Longhorn. I don't know what MS plans for a browser in Longhorn, but I know it will be bad for all other browsers.
That second one is the money.
You can argue your 'superior morals' or whatever you want to call it all you like. The fact is that for the big, successful proprietry software houses out there Free software will NEVER catch on. Having ALL software Free is just not realistic.
Consider this:
Let's say I'm the CEO of Adobe. My engineers tell me that (for $5 million) they can develop an awesome software package. Let's call it 'Photoshop'. Now I know from market research that I can sell Photoshop for about $200 to enough users to recover the $5m and to make a bit of profit. But what if I was forced to make this software Free? I'll sell maybe a few hundred copies, and everyone else will just copy if from those people. Now I have to try to make back my $5m by supporting the software, but soon other companies starts undercutting my support fees (because they don't have the $5m to recover) and I can't compete on that anymore either. And other companies start selling Photoshop for $2 via download - so I have no more income.
How would Photoshop ever exist in suck a world? What about other packages that costs millions to develop but can only be sold for a few dollars?
Thus there will always be proprietry software, and I for one like it that way.
I for one agree with you on this. Stallman is a dirty hippy.
Best post EVAR!
I know some of you think that ALL software should be Free. Let's for a moment consider a world where ALL software must be Free by law.
Now let's say I'm CEO of Adobe. My engineers say they can - for about $5 million - develop a really really good software tool. Let's say they want to call it 'Photoshop'. I know from market research that users will be willing to pay about $200 for a copy of 'Photoshop'.
In the world we live in now, I can say 'Yes here's your $5m go develop it' because I know the chances are good that I can sell enough copies for $200 a piece to recover the investment and to make a bit of profit on top.
But in a 'Free' software world I can't do this. The first guy that I sell 'Photoshop' to will upload it to Kazaa and then I can only make money from supporting Photoshop users. Soon other companies will support them for less, and I can't even do that anymore.
So how can I fork out $5m for this software in a Free software world? I don't get it.
Very true. I'm seriously considering changing my email address every year (which would be a bitch) because there's no other way to avoid spam if other people has your email in their contact list. The best way we have right now to combat spam, is to make it too expensive for the spammers. Today I kept a poor helpdesk person busy for 70 minutes without buying any penis pills.
Working for a proprietry software shop reduces the freedom in the world? Please explain.
Um... right. All you can do is check that the domain is valid. You need one of those new (experimental) protocols to check if an ADDRESS is valid. The only way you can currently reliably check for valid email addresses (and not just valid domains) is by actually sending an email and checking if it's accepted. Yes there are protocols in the works that will allow you to check the validity of an email address without doing this, but they're far from universal at this stage. Hence you can't use them because there's a possibility that a legitimate sender does not support these protocols.
Don't talk about stuff you obviously know nothing about. We've also strayed from your original 'idea' of bouncing spam emails. That's still stupid.
Ah I love dirty linux hippies!
If you argue that software should be free, then you should also be in favour of copying music, or movies, and being allowed to modify / sell that movie / music as you like. That makes no sense. It would mean that no artist could make a living from music, and that no studio would make movies.
In the software world that would mean no Adobe would be able to make a Photoshop, simply because they would not recover their costs. How would Adobe survive in your universe? You, sir, are an idiot.
Ok, maybe I'm missing something here.
You are indeed. The 0wned zombie machine is the spammer's friend. By emailing trojans to millions of Outlook users I can 1) Get a massive list of valid email addresses and 2) Recruit loads of PCs to spam others.
I don't use my regular email address for anything on the web. Yet I still get spam. Why? Because someone that had my email address in their contact list got 0wned. I get LOTS of spam that's customised with information gathered this way.
The VAST MAJORITY of spam (everything I've recieved in the last few weeks certainly) comes with forged headers. You can do some research if you want. Send all your spam from all your boxes back to the 'sender' for a couple of weeks and see what happens. Answer? NOTHING. Spammers don't maintain mailing lists. They just supplement them. You can kill your email address for months, and when you create it again I guarantee you'l get spam again immediately.
And about your 'if the address is bogus don't read it' comment. Are you saying that I should send a 'Are you real' reply to every email I get from a new address? That would sure piss off my clients. I know some companies that does that, and it's irritating as hell.
Leave the thinking to the professionals kid.
Well in my inbox that's a tiny minority of spam. Less than 1%. Doing away with those emails will not make a noticable difference. That's the point of my email - MOST spam are for fly-by-night scams.
Richard Stallman is an idiot. There's nothing ethically wrong with proprietary software. It does NOT hurt your fellow human beings. By his reasoning the formula for Coca-Cola should be public knowledge, the Colonel's 11 herbs and spices should be available to anyone who wants to know, etc. It makes no sense.