Re: wxPython Licence vs GPL

On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 20:17:15 -0800, Alex Martelli wrote:

> Steven D'Aprano <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 17:43:22 +0100, Martin P. Hellwig wrote:
>>
>> > if I owned a company
>> > making profit on software sales (sale =! support) you sign a death wish
>> > for using GPL
>>
>> Apart from Microsoft, and possibly Quark (makers of Quark Express desktop
>> packaging software), and perhaps a few console game developers, is there
>> any company making a profit on software sales?
>
> I believe Oracle is doing fine (and they appear to be trying to buy up
> most everybody else -- other companies which used to make profits from
> software sales before they got gobbled up). I think SAP and Adobe
> aren't doing badly, either, but I haven't checked up on them in a while.

My understanding is that both Oracle and SAP make most of their money
through consulting and customization rather than licencing or sales. I
don't know anyone who has bought a SAP solution that didn't spend an awful
lot of money having it customized -- and unless I'm very mistaken, you
don't own the customizations you pay for.

Adobe, I'm not sure -- I suspect their biggest source of income is
royalties on Postscript for laser printers, but I could be wrong. I don't
even know anyone who uses Pagemaker any more -- it seems to have been
almost completely overshadowed by Quark Xpress.

> I'd be surprised if there weren't many relative minnows that I didn't
> think of, beyond the few "obvious" big fishes above listed.

Yes, there are a few -- Quickbooks and MYOB, although arguably their main
income comes from subscription/upgrades rather than sales. But still,
consider the sheer size of the software industry, and the fact that apart
from the 800lb gorilla of Microsoft, almost nobody can make a profit from
selling software.



--
Steven.

.

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