Open-source companies see profit aplenty

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Beware of the FSF Conspirators

>> What you are seeing is a paradigm shift. You are clinging to the old Paradigm while others are moving to the new paradigm. It's a fact of life if you don't change with the times you die off like the dinosaurs. If you are quick to adapt and see the opportunities you stand to be the next Bill Gates. He took advantage of paradigm shift a look what happened. <<

What we are seeing may be a paradigm shift, but it would be a very bad paradigm shift if successful. When the buggy industry gave way, didn?t it give way to the automobile industry that lead a massive expansion of the vehicle market? When typewriters and standalone word processors gave way to PCs and word processor applications, did that not help in making the PC ubiquitous leading to an expansion of one market at the expense of others? What markets do OSS markets expand? Services? But services already exist under proprietary software, and there is no evidence that if OSS eliminates proprietary off-the-shelf software, this would somehow lead to an expansion of job opportunities for developers. Quite frankly I see the opposite happening. It was innovations in Java proprietary software that helped fuel an expansion of job opportunities for developers. It has been the introduction .Net technology that has reinvigorated Windows development for programmers on the same platform. As John Carroll pointed out, it is ?sale-value? software that disproportionately impacts the rest of the software industry. It is innovations brought by these ?sale-value? software that drive opportunities for the rest of the industry including custom developers. A great example is web services. Think about it. What if the ?software treadmill? was to stop spinning? Where would much of the need for new hardware come from? And if proprietary software and hardware do not drive the innovation that supports new kinds of software being developed, where would be the demand for developers?

I believe there is a reason why the FSF and others are targeting proprietary software: it is because they are fully aware of this point. Take out off-the-shelf software, and you will deal an unrecoverable blow to the software industry, leading to the ?deprofessionalizing? of the industry ? thereby resulting in free software everywhere.

Posted by: P. Douglas   Posted on: 05/20/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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