Re:how is using sea water for cooling cool???
on
The Google Navy
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· Score: 1
Since servers convert all energy to heat, there will neither be a net heat loss nor a net heat increase.
So the ship will be neutral to the ocean with respect to heat.
This assumes that no heat is released to the athmosphere which is not 100% the case.
So in total we can expect a very small cooling effect on the ocean and a very small heating effect of the athmosphere.
I think that even that small effect can be mitigated or compensated by proper technology. ( but it won't probably be worth the effort )
Also, when we talk about heat, the effect of sunlight on the ship has to be taken into account.
But I guess that by choosing a suitable color for the ship, the effect of the sunlight on the total heat budget can be geared towards neutral, i.e. to have the same effect on the ocean as if the ship were not there.
So, actually, such a ship can be very environmently friendly if properly designed.
Actually it's quite a nice place to live: still a real democracy, very low criminality, lower taxes than our neighbor country Germany,...
As to the traffic tickets:
They didn't yet make a single delivery/adressing failure as far as I can tell from experience. I guess this is the case because they maintain their customer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcar-owner's database very well.
They don't include photos, just indicate place and time of the radar measurement and the speed. ( printing photos is expensive... )
Their tolerance is quite generous: You have to drive more than at least 10km/h too fast in order to get a ticket.
Where I live, traffic tickets do get more expensive if you take them to court.
They formulate it differently: They say: When you pay the ticket until such and such date, then you get a discount and you will stay somehow anonymous as they don't ask who was driving the car at that time...
This way, most people pay the tickes on time and the government can handle it with minimal amounts of work, probably even automatically because each money transfer includes a number ( i.e. database key ). Now with the radar boxes also working automatically, the government makes some nice, easy money from people who are driving too fast...
With the RIAA acting like a bull in a china shop, they will not only destroy the loyality of their own customer base ( which will cause the RIAA members to go out of business in the end ),
but they will also cause a lot of collateral damage:
They will, in the long run, cause a lot of political pressure for abolishing copyright law from a large portion of the population, so politicans will eventually abolish copyright in order to be able to win elections.
Now, a complete abolishment of copyright will cause damage because many people who currently use copyright in a reasonable way will not be able to create their products anymore.
Which means that the creation of information-products will be mostly in the hands of the government and to a lesser extent in the hands of hobbyists.
Creation of information-products like books, software etc mostly in the hands of the government is IMHO a dangerous thing because it gives a lot of influential (propagandistic) power to the government. (most politicians will like this, BTW)
Re:Project Mgmt 101 - Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick two.
on
Best Home Network NAS
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· Score: 1
Definitely: For example, you can increase the reliability of the whole solution by buying more disks (which makes it less cheap but still kind of affordable.) For example I use 4 external harddisks with capacities between 500GB and 750Gb for backups.
In order to protect against theft or fire etc, two of these hard disks are always stored in a safe at a bank. I swap disks between the safe and home about once a month. To rent such a space in a bank safe is very affordable: around EUR 30 per year.
With this backup scheme I have an investment in hardware of about EUR 400 for the disks and EUR 30 per year for the safe. This gives me protection against harddisk failures, user errors, theft and fire etc for a reasonable cost.
(Plus, my primary computer is a notebook which I almost always have with me, so in many cases there are 3 physical locations where all data is stored: notebook, home, bank safe.)
As to software: Using simple tools which are installed on each recovery CDROM makes it easier to recover the data. So I just use tar + gzip and some shell scripts to call tar + gzip.
I doubt that "no company lives forever" statement.
For example I know of companies which are really long lived, for example the local brewery here in Salzburg/Austria which exists since 1492 and is privately held. They are still doing really well and have an extremely strong brand here. (To the extent that it is considered kind of unpatriotic to drink or like another beer.)
BTW, They are using the fact that they were founded the same year as Columbus discovered America in their marketing...
So, my conclusion is that well managed companies can indeed live forever.
I have to disagree with the marginal cost of software being only a few cents for electricity because:
If you take serving your customers or users seriously then the marginal cost is way above a few cents because of
providing really useful customer support
listening to suggestions
implementing suggestions
fixing bugs (more users means more different usecases which means more bugs triggered)
Of course there is some economics of scale because
answers to frequently asked support questions can be added to the documentation or to the FAQ,
you may put up a list of existing suggestions for users to check before subimtting theirs ( but I am not sure that this is a good idea because it may actually increase the resistence for giving any suggestions )
many suggestions are the same, so the total number of useful suggestions grows slower than linear with the number of users.
there is only a finite number of bugs in any given program (yes, really:-), and the more users you have, the more duplicate use cases you have in your user-base, so the effort for bug-fixing grows slower than linear.
But even despite these economics of scale, the cost per user is way above a few cents.
(if serving the customers is taken seriously, which every company in there for long term stability in their business model ought to do.)
I know this all from experience (though I am not yet benefitting from the economics of scale effect in a significant way, but I see the start of that curve already, and I am working on increasing that of course...)
It really boils down to a product being more than just the core product (physcial item or bits of data) but also having a service component. Depending on the product, the service component can be an essential part of its value to the customers.
There are several market niches where Linux is used as a desktop OS.
I know this from my experience with selling a desktop app for Linux.
Knowing these niches can be important for increasing the market share of Linux in other areas because
I think that it's much easier to let one successful niche trigger the use of Linux in another niche than
to start from scratch in each market niche.
Since I have some insight into this, I share this info here with you in the hope that it will be useful
for increasing the market share of Linux on the desktop.
Through experience with interaction with (potential) customers I know the following about these niches:
Users who previously have used SGIs and Sun workstations in a professional environment.
These are high end users who typically use specialized apps which typically have a Motif GUI.
More than 50% of these users use OpenGL through hardware acceleration. Nvidia is the dominant player with respect to graphics hardware.
There are at least the following three industries in this niche:
geological research, primary for the oil sector
air traffic control
movie industry ( animated movies for entertainment, though they may
switch to the mac given Steve Job's involvement with a big player in that industry)
This niche may be a good start for introducing Linux in other professional areas because it
shows that Linux works extremely well for mission critical stuff.
Also, these industries are kind of cool, so it's easy to get attention with mentioning them.
Amateurs who stay on the cutting edge just for the fun of it.
These people like to try out the newest things like Xgl+compiz etc.
They are probably good at promoting Linux themselves but I am not sure whether
they are able to promote it outside of their niche because when asked what
they actually accomplish productively they might say that they just play with it
as a self-service.
But they may be catalysts on decisions for introducing Linux in their workplace.
(at least they won't oppose it...)
Educational institutions
They primarily use it for training people on Linux.
This is a very good niche for increasing the market share of desktop Linux because because it
naturally induces a lot of promotion for Linux in the jobs which people get after finishing their education.
Governments and their administration
Especially non-US governments like Linux because it is not controlled by a US-entity.
Due to it being open source they can control it themselves if needed.
Plus there are some cost savings involved with Linux which are always welcome by governments.
This is actually a very good market niche for Linux as it gives us direct access to
the people who decide on issues like patents and DRM which are very important for Linux.
(If they like their Linux computer they won't support decisions which makes it illegal to use it,
if they are being informed about that fact.)
Even parts of institutions controlled by the US-government use Linux,
so we may even have good chances to get
more Linux friendly legislation in the US.
In addition to the direct political implications,
government agencies using Linux is good PR for Linux in general,
and it makes the governments design their e-government interfaces in a way which is
useable from Linux, i.e. no proprietary formats like MS Word or MS Excel.
This enables adoption of Linux in all sectors with e-government interfaces.
Politically motivated users of Linux
They use and support Linux because it is free as in free speech.
This is an important market niche for Linux where MS and Apple cannot enter by definition.
These people guarantee that Linux is here to stay no matter what other market niches decide to do.
This is good for Linux market share because it can be used in promotions of Linux
by stating that an inv
While I agree with most points of Eben Moglen's great speech,
including the point that Microsoft's days are counted
(I think that the days of all big organizations are counted
due to the effect of the Internet on society, and,
even if this sounds ironically, I think this includes Google.) I don't agree with his statement that the problem of payment
of the first copy is solved.
In fact I think that this problem is far from being solved
and I think that this problem is the single most important
reason for most closed-source software not being liberated today.
Let me explain this in more detail below. I also give
a real life example to illustrate this.
While the situation has improved and some free software developers now
get payed for writing free software (usually as an employee), I think that
still, most free software developers do not get fairly compensated for their
work.
Plus, I am sure that there are many shareware authors and individual
software vendors who would be more than happy to liberate their software
in case they get compensated for the cost of creating the software and
have a viable perspective
of being compensated for the further development and maintenance of the
software.
How do I know that?
First, I am one of them (independent software vendor).
Second, I know from experience:
I am far from having the cost of development of my software product payed.
So the cost of making the first copy has not been payed yet.
In the current stage of development of my business, this is
an accepted part of the business plan:
The plan is to first create the software by temporarily bearing the
cost myself by using savings, leisure time and incurring debt
with the plan to recover that cost later by selling licenses.
Now, selling licenses is a difficult process in its own,
so I'd be more than happy to have somebody pay me the total cost of creation
of the software in exchange for releasing it under the GPL.
Since I think that my project is a fairly typical one,
I give some specific numbers here, so you get an idea
of the scope of the issue:
So far, I have invested about 6000 hours of work into this project.
Now to convert this to an amout of money, this has to be with
an hourly rate.
In this example I use the hourly rate for programming services
as proposed by my local chamber of commerce, which is a fair number
which is calculated in a way that it pays for all expenses related
to that work, including taxes, social security, office space, etc.
So I wind up with ost of development of about EUR 576000 or US$758476
so, about 3 quarter of a million dollars.
Now, in that early stage of executing my business plan
I have recovered about EUR 27000 or USD 35500 (turnover minus cost of marketing)
that's about 4.7% of the cost. The majority of which was payed
by one single customer for licenses in the years 1998 and 2003.
Likewise, in the current state of my business plan I have a lot of debt
and since I maxed out my debt capacity, I earn the major part of my
living with a day job as an employee writing closed-source software
for somebody else.
Now, you probably don't care about my current debt levels
and about my business plan,
and rightly so. I write this as a real life example for illustrating what
holds small companies and individual developpers back from
open sourcing their software and you may care about that.
You may also not care about my product (and I don't mention it here
you gotta find it yourself)
but maybe you may care about it. Maybe my product could have a very
positive indirect effect on the popularity of the Linux platform
if it were open source. (I hope that it being closed source still
has part of this effect but of course open source would increase the
number of users and thus increase the effect.)
So my point as gained from from experience is: Getting payment for the cost of the first copy is the major reason
why many small software compa
I remember that in University we learned in the networking-course about why it is more economic to have all communication, including data, voice and video be transferred on top of the same network-layer protocol.
It was given as an easy-to-understand illustration about the general benefits of a layered network architecture. It was just an obvious idea used to emphasize a point.
This was way before year 2000, I guess it was around 1995.
And the prof was already very long term active in networking by then, in fact he was one of the Internet-technology pioneers, so he had this idea in his mind for much much longer probably.
Therefore, a broad patent on "triple play" filed in 2000 is just ridiculous. There already was an ocean of prior art at least in form of ideas at this point in time.
Unfortunately I don't have any written proof anymore. But I guess there will be quite a sizable number of people who have such a written proof of prior art dating way before year 2000.
On the other hand, if the patent is about a very specific technique for implementing some aspects of triple play in a better way than before, then it might be valid.
But then it is not much of a threat. It's probably possible to make a good or even better triple play implementation which does not use this specific technology.
Also, what about the OSI-network model? This is *old* by now and for sure it or associated literature will include a mentioning of what is now buzzworded as "triple play" by those who don't understand it technically.
Chris
PS: I think that the term "triple play" rather ridiculous. There are plenty of protocols and forms of data which can be transmitted over the Internet-Protocol, not just tree.
It's just for the pre-Internet-Protocol folks who were used to install an extra cable and an extra business model for each of these forms of data transmission.
For me, I started getting to know the Internet-Protocol and the associated philosophy and vision in the year 1989, so really a patent in year 2000 seems ridiculous.
In fact I learned about email before I learned about Fax. And Fax seemed a way outdated technology for me when I heard about it...
For me, "triple play" means that we finally start consolidating our old and awkward communication-infrastructure towards a thing which just makes sense,
about 10 to 15 years later than would have been necessary from a technical point of view.
It was more a process of breaking government monopolys and established business models rather than a technical process. And you can't patent political work and lobbyism.:-)
I don't see evidence that he's opposed to economic acceptance as a whole any more than antislavery folks are opposed to economic activities as a whole. They're only opposed to economic activities that they consider morally wrong.
Good Point!
Instead of demanding from RSM to invent business models in addition to the many great things he already does, I think we have to use our own creativity to develop business models which do provide a way to make money directly from creating free software.
Just that there is not yet such a business model doesn't mean it that it is impossible. It just has to be invented, such as motors have been invented some day in the past. Before the first motor was invented, many people thought it to be impossible, probably.
Now, inventing business models is a task which requires a completely
different skill set than inventing technical things. That's probably
the reason why us programers have a hard time inventing them.
And people who are talented in inventing business models
have no incentive to invent such a business model. They rather
do what's easier, such as either proprietary software or
selling services for free software written by others.
So, that's probably the reason why there is no such business model yet.
But I am still optimistic that such a business model is possible
and just waits to be invented. Let me explain:
Actually it is a simple fact: Free open source software delivers much more value to the public than proprietary software does. Among others, the value is enhanced by possibility to modify it,
to study the source code, i.e. having a chance to really know what it does, so to be able to make an informed decision whether to use it, etc.
So, since more value is delivered, there must be a way to make at least
the amount of money which can be made using the proprietary model.
The problem to be solved is a marketing and a selling problem.
In other words, to find a way to convince people to pay for the value they get.
I think this must be possible in some way and I also think it will
provide a lot of benefits to the free software movement if we find such a way.
I didn't yet find a complete business model but I am doing something for inventing one: I am intensively studying marketing and sales. (It has a real learning curve, especially for a programer.:-)
So I may come up with some solution someday. And I have a strong motivation to do so, being in my heart a believer in free software but on the other hand earning my money with writing proprietary software, partly with a program which I own. So as soon as I have a business model for free software which I trust, I am going to use it because I'd feel much better then.
I invite everybody to engage in a discussion about this topic in order to gather ideas. Just post a reply here or send me an email.
Maybe I will set up a website for coordinating the efforts of inventing
business models for free software.
The current state of my ideas (which are not a complete business model yet) is as follows:
Provide an irresistible offer to the public which is a simple as:
You pay me X dollars and I will release this software under the GPL
which will provide Y dollars of value to the whole public.
With the value Y being much much greater than the price X, of course. That's how the offer becomes
irresistible.
(Now there are many variants to this offer. The software may already
exist and already offered the proprietary way or the software does not exist yet but will be written as soon as the money arrives.)
This offer has just one essential flaw: The public is an abstract entity which cannot act as such. Only indivduals can act and to some extent organisations can act, but ultimately individuals make organisations to act.
So, the real challenge is to change that offer so that individuals can act upon it while th
Slashdot Mirror
Since servers convert all energy to heat, there will neither be a net heat loss nor a net heat increase. So the ship will be neutral to the ocean with respect to heat.
This assumes that no heat is released to the athmosphere which is not 100% the case. So in total we can expect a very small cooling effect on the ocean and a very small heating effect of the athmosphere. I think that even that small effect can be mitigated or compensated by proper technology. ( but it won't probably be worth the effort )
Also, when we talk about heat, the effect of sunlight on the ship has to be taken into account. But I guess that by choosing a suitable color for the ship, the effect of the sunlight on the total heat budget can be geared towards neutral, i.e. to have the same effect on the ocean as if the ship were not there.
So, actually, such a ship can be very environmently friendly if properly designed.
I live in Austria/Europa.
Actually it's quite a nice place to live: still a real democracy, very low criminality, lower taxes than our neighbor country Germany, ...
As to the traffic tickets: They didn't yet make a single delivery/adressing failure as far as I can tell from experience. I guess this is the case because they maintain their customer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcar-owner's database very well. They don't include photos, just indicate place and time of the radar measurement and the speed. ( printing photos is expensive... ) Their tolerance is quite generous: You have to drive more than at least 10km/h too fast in order to get a ticket.
Where I live, traffic tickets do get more expensive if you take them to court.
They formulate it differently: They say: When you pay the ticket until such and such date, then you get a discount and you will stay somehow anonymous as they don't ask who was driving the car at that time...
This way, most people pay the tickes on time and the government can handle it with minimal amounts of work, probably even automatically because each money transfer includes a number ( i.e. database key ). Now with the radar boxes also working automatically, the government makes some nice, easy money from people who are driving too fast...
With the RIAA acting like a bull in a china shop, they will not only destroy the loyality of their own customer base ( which will cause the RIAA members to go out of business in the end ),
but they will also cause a lot of collateral damage:
They will, in the long run, cause a lot of political pressure for abolishing copyright law from a large portion of the population, so politicans will eventually abolish copyright in order to be able to win elections.
Now, a complete abolishment of copyright will cause damage because many people who currently use copyright in a reasonable way will not be able to create their products anymore.
Which means that the creation of information-products will be mostly in the hands of the government and to a lesser extent in the hands of hobbyists.
Creation of information-products like books, software etc mostly in the hands of the government is IMHO a dangerous thing because it gives a lot of influential (propagandistic) power to the government. (most politicians will like this, BTW)
Definitely: For example, you can increase the reliability of the whole solution by buying more disks (which makes it less cheap but still kind of affordable.)
For example I use 4 external harddisks with capacities between 500GB and 750Gb for backups.
In order to protect against theft or fire etc, two of these hard disks are always stored in a safe at a bank. I swap disks between the safe and home about once a month.
To rent such a space in a bank safe is very affordable: around EUR 30 per year.
With this backup scheme I have an investment in hardware of about EUR 400 for the disks and EUR 30 per year for the safe. This gives me protection against harddisk failures, user errors, theft and fire etc for a reasonable cost.
(Plus, my primary computer is a notebook which I almost always have with me, so in many cases there are 3 physical locations where all data is stored: notebook, home, bank safe.)
As to software: Using simple tools which are installed on each recovery CDROM makes it easier to recover the data. So I just use tar + gzip and some shell scripts to call tar + gzip.
I doubt that "no company lives forever" statement.
For example I know of companies which are really long lived, for example the local brewery here in Salzburg/Austria which exists since 1492 and is privately held.
They are still doing really well and have an extremely strong brand here.
(To the extent that it is considered kind of unpatriotic to drink or like another beer.)
BTW, They are using the fact that they were founded the same year as Columbus discovered America in their marketing...
So, my conclusion is that well managed companies can indeed live forever.
I have to disagree with the marginal cost of software being only a few cents for electricity because:
If you take serving your customers or users seriously then the marginal cost is way above a few cents because of
Of course there is some economics of scale because
But even despite these economics of scale, the cost per user is way above a few cents. (if serving the customers is taken seriously, which every company in there for long term stability in their business model ought to do.)
I know this all from experience (though I am not yet benefitting from the economics of scale effect in a significant way, but I see the start of that curve already, and I am working on increasing that of course...)
It really boils down to a product being more than just the core product (physcial item or bits of data) but also having a service component. Depending on the product, the service component can be an essential part of its value to the customers.There are several market niches where Linux is used as a desktop OS. I know this from my experience with selling a desktop app for Linux.
Knowing these niches can be important for increasing the market share of Linux in other areas because I think that it's much easier to let one successful niche trigger the use of Linux in another niche than to start from scratch in each market niche.
Since I have some insight into this, I share this info here with you in the hope that it will be useful for increasing the market share of Linux on the desktop. Through experience with interaction with (potential) customers I know the following about these niches:
These are high end users who typically use specialized apps which typically have a Motif GUI. More than 50% of these users use OpenGL through hardware acceleration. Nvidia is the dominant player with respect to graphics hardware.
There are at least the following three industries in this niche:
This niche may be a good start for introducing Linux in other professional areas because it shows that Linux works extremely well for mission critical stuff.
Also, these industries are kind of cool, so it's easy to get attention with mentioning them.
These people like to try out the newest things like Xgl+compiz etc.
They are probably good at promoting Linux themselves but I am not sure whether they are able to promote it outside of their niche because when asked what they actually accomplish productively they might say that they just play with it as a self-service.
But they may be catalysts on decisions for introducing Linux in their workplace. (at least they won't oppose it...)
They primarily use it for training people on Linux.
This is a very good niche for increasing the market share of desktop Linux because because it naturally induces a lot of promotion for Linux in the jobs which people get after finishing their education.
Especially non-US governments like Linux because it is not controlled by a US-entity. Due to it being open source they can control it themselves if needed. Plus there are some cost savings involved with Linux which are always welcome by governments.
This is actually a very good market niche for Linux as it gives us direct access to the people who decide on issues like patents and DRM which are very important for Linux. (If they like their Linux computer they won't support decisions which makes it illegal to use it, if they are being informed about that fact.)
Even parts of institutions controlled by the US-government use Linux, so we may even have good chances to get more Linux friendly legislation in the US. In addition to the direct political implications,
They use and support Linux because it is free as in free speech.
This is an important market niche for Linux where MS and Apple cannot enter by definition.
These people guarantee that Linux is here to stay no matter what other market niches decide to do.
This is good for Linux market share because it can be used in promotions of Linux by stating that an inv
I don't agree with his statement that the problem of payment of the first copy is solved.
In fact I think that this problem is far from being solved and I think that this problem is the single most important reason for most closed-source software not being liberated today.
Let me explain this in more detail below. I also give a real life example to illustrate this.
While the situation has improved and some free software developers now get payed for writing free software (usually as an employee), I think that still, most free software developers do not get fairly compensated for their work.
Plus, I am sure that there are many shareware authors and individual software vendors who would be more than happy to liberate their software in case they get compensated for the cost of creating the software and have a viable perspective of being compensated for the further development and maintenance of the software.
How do I know that?
First, I am one of them (independent software vendor).
Second, I know from experience:
I remember that in University we learned in the networking-course about why it is more economic to have all communication, including data, voice and video be transferred on top of the same network-layer protocol.
It was given as an easy-to-understand illustration about the general benefits of a layered network architecture. It was just an obvious idea used to emphasize a point.
This was way before year 2000, I guess it was around 1995. And the prof was already very long term active in networking by then, in fact he was one of the Internet-technology pioneers, so he had this idea in his mind for much much longer probably.
Therefore, a broad patent on "triple play" filed in 2000 is just ridiculous. There already was an ocean of prior art at least in form of ideas at this point in time.
Unfortunately I don't have any written proof anymore. But I guess there will be quite a sizable number of people who have such a written proof of prior art dating way before year 2000.
On the other hand, if the patent is about a very specific technique for implementing some aspects of triple play in a better way than before, then it might be valid.
But then it is not much of a threat. It's probably possible to make a good or even better triple play implementation which does not use this specific technology.
Also, what about the OSI-network model? This is *old* by now and for sure it or associated literature will include a mentioning of what is now buzzworded as "triple play" by those who don't understand it technically.
Chris
PS: I think that the term "triple play" rather ridiculous. There are plenty of protocols and forms of data which can be transmitted over the Internet-Protocol, not just tree.
It's just for the pre-Internet-Protocol folks who were used to install an extra cable and an extra business model for each of these forms of data transmission.
For me, I started getting to know the Internet-Protocol and the associated philosophy and vision in the year 1989, so really a patent in year 2000 seems ridiculous.
In fact I learned about email before I learned about Fax. And Fax seemed a way outdated technology for me when I heard about it...
For me, "triple play" means that we finally start consolidating our old and awkward communication-infrastructure towards a thing which just makes sense, about 10 to 15 years later than would have been necessary from a technical point of view.
It was more a process of breaking government monopolys and established business models rather than a technical process. And you can't patent political work and lobbyism. :-)
Good Point!
Instead of demanding from RSM to invent business models in addition to the many great things he already does, I think we have to use our own creativity to develop business models which do provide a way to make money directly from creating free software.
Just that there is not yet such a business model doesn't mean it that it is impossible. It just has to be invented, such as motors have been invented some day in the past. Before the first motor was invented, many people thought it to be impossible, probably.
Now, inventing business models is a task which requires a completely different skill set than inventing technical things. That's probably the reason why us programers have a hard time inventing them.
And people who are talented in inventing business models have no incentive to invent such a business model. They rather do what's easier, such as either proprietary software or selling services for free software written by others.
So, that's probably the reason why there is no such business model yet.
But I am still optimistic that such a business model is possible and just waits to be invented. Let me explain:
Actually it is a simple fact:
Free open source software delivers much more value to the public than proprietary software does. Among others, the value is enhanced by possibility to modify it, to study the source code, i.e. having a chance to really know what it does, so to be able to make an informed decision whether to use it, etc.
So, since more value is delivered, there must be a way to make at least the amount of money which can be made using the proprietary model.
The problem to be solved is a marketing and a selling problem. In other words, to find a way to convince people to pay for the value they get.
I think this must be possible in some way and I also think it will provide a lot of benefits to the free software movement if we find such a way.
I didn't yet find a complete business model but I am doing something for inventing one: I am intensively studying marketing and sales. (It has a real learning curve, especially for a programer. :-)
So I may come up with some solution someday. And I have a strong motivation to do so, being in my heart a believer in free software but on the other hand earning my money with writing proprietary software, partly with a program which I own. So as soon as I have a business model for free software which I trust, I am going to use it because I'd feel much better then.
I invite everybody to engage in a discussion about this topic in order to gather ideas. Just post a reply here or send me an email.
Maybe I will set up a website for coordinating the efforts of inventing business models for free software.
The current state of my ideas (which are not a complete business model yet) is as follows:
Provide an irresistible offer to the public which is a simple as: You pay me X dollars and I will release this software under the GPL which will provide Y dollars of value to the whole public. With the value Y being much much greater than the price X, of course. That's how the offer becomes irresistible.
(Now there are many variants to this offer. The software may already exist and already offered the proprietary way or the software does not exist yet but will be written as soon as the money arrives.)
This offer has just one essential flaw: The public is an abstract entity which cannot act as such. Only indivduals can act and to some extent organisations can act, but ultimately individuals make organisations to act.
So, the real challenge is to change that offer so that individuals can act upon it while th
Try googling for "linux desktop recorder" again. :-)