Sun criticizes popular open-source license

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Careful with assumptions

"You have obviously never been part of an actual software (only) company."

Incorrect. I have spent 6+ years of my career working for two different software companies. Neither company had more than 15 employees. One is still in operation.

My point is not that developing software is "free" but that producing it (stamping out CDs and/or maintaining download access, etc.) is nearly free compared to the cost of developing it.

Developing a car, for example, takes engineers, QA, personel, etc. and is expensive. Producing a car is still an expensive proposition because the materials cost and labor is expended to manipulate the materials into a salable copy of the design. In contrast, producing a salable copy of a program is very inexpensive.

MS has an 80% margin on WinXP. Why? Because the vast majority of the sales of that product require almost NO PRODUCTON COST. The OEM has an image on a server that they blast into each computer. Other than contract maintenance, MS does NOTHING to produce each of those sales!

Sure, it cost MS millions, perhaps even billions, to create WinXP. But they long since recouped that initial cost and now have continual income with no direct production cost.

I sympathize with the difficulties of breaking even developing software. Any business has to produce, work, create or die. If I decide to harness a community of people to help develop "my" software, the costs of development go way down. Collaboration, the internet, knowledge sharing, all of this and more comes together to drive the cost of development lower and lower. Since the cost of production and distribution is near zero, decreasing the cost of development is possible for FS/OSS efforts.

You can be upset that FS/OSS is another source of pressure on your business. I can understand that.

"Your assumption that software is overpriced is severely flawed."

This is not my assumption. The marketplace is telling us that software is overpriced. FS/OSS software would not have been born if software were not overpriced. You mention supply and demand. A significant portion of the software developing world has decied that it is cheaper to create software for each other than purchase it on a proprietary model. There is a supply of software and more and more consumer/creators of software are rejecting the supply at the prices offered and are making their own.

"Then there is always the concept of supply vs demand. If what you say is true, then developing commercial software will be such a big attraction ... That is what capitalism is all about."

What is it you are complaining about? More and more peopler ARE popping up and creating competition. That is the problem you are talking about because more and more of the people popping up are releasing software under FS/OSS licenses. If the type of competition does not suit you, I'm sorry. Competition is not about playing by your rules. It is about playing by the rules that they want. That is what capitalism is all about!

I'm sorry it upsets you so much that someone changed the rules in the middle of your game. The buggy whip manufacturers were upset about horseless carridges for the same reason. The rules have changed. Complaining will not change them back.

Posted by: alandd   Posted on: 04/06/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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