Re: GPL Antithethical to Business

From: Randall Hyde (randyhyde_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 06/02/04 

Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 01:46:03 GMT

"Roy Jones" <mhca12@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:opr8xq7uvijw3stx@news.la.sbcglobal.net...
.
>
> Crime, no. Competition definitely. If someone chooses to rewrite from
> scratch a piece of
> commercial software and then gives it away for free let them. All you have
> to do is build a
> better mousetrap, then the "GPL ***"s can go F themselves.
>
> Roy

Of course, once it's no longer profitable to create commercial products,
who's going to create new, innovative, software products? Please don't
tell me that GPL software is innovative. All the popular GPL stuff exists
because
people want free (as in free-beer, forget software freedom nonsense)
versions of existing products (OSes, compiler suites, office tools, editors,
etc.).

Commercial software is a *high-margin* product; until, of course, you
consider the research and development costs. One advantage that the
"Open Source" movement (as exemplified by FSF) has is that they get
to judge what software creations they want to produce based on what's
succeeded in the market. Although the set isn't completely empty, you
don't see a large number of highly successful applications, that is, those
that have reached "kill app" status, that had no prior examples achieving
success in the commercial space.

Back in the "bad old days" when outfits like the BPA were warning us
that "software piracy" would destroy the motivation for programmers to
write new and innovative software. We all laughed at them. But today,
I see a troubling trend - companies like IBM, that used to dump billions
into software research creating completely new software technologies
are shifting their funding to support GPL products like Linux. On the
face of it, this doesn't seem like such a bad thing. Adding journaling
file systems and the like to Linux does help move it a tiny bit out
of the dark ages, and all. But that money *could* have gone to creating
the next "big thing" rather than pushing a tired, 1970's-era design, a
little
farther along. Imagine someone like QSSL (creators of QNX) trying
to interest VCs into investing money in a new style operating system
today. The VCs would tell them they are out of their minds - what
would be the ROI when people can get Linux for free. One need look
no farther than Wind River to see what has happened to the commercial
real-time operating system space as a result of all this "open source"
software floating around. Some people might think this is a good thing,
but the truth is, this "free" software is coming with a heavy price -
there is no longer quite the financial incentive to innovate (in OSes)
as there once was. Linux has forever, and inequivocally, eliminated
that. Mind you, I'm not particularly harping on Linux or even the
"Open Source/Freeware" movement (Lord knows, I crank out
enough public domain stuff), but I am suggesting that there is a
down side to all of this.

I would love to see researchers produce some great works, new
tools, and introduce new technologies. But I'm wise enough to realize
that most people aren't going to make the effort out of pure
humanitarian reasons. Certainly, few corporations will be willing to
do this (and it takes a lot of money, the kind that typically is found
only in large corporations, to create and polish an innovative,
complex software product). To date, what we're getting for free
is simply the stuff we were paying for before, we're not getting
new and innovative stuff. I seriously doubt, for example, you'd
find a new Apple, willing to invest in a new technology OS,
in today's climate. Soon, I suspect the same will be true in
the application space. And that's not good.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde