Andre Hedrick wrote:
> > There is overproduction of generic-purpose software in world and
> > of course lots of companies are going to bancrupt soon, but if you
> > continue this way, GPL is going the same way...
>
> Do not follow the thought, sorry.
The Novell stuff. Sorry to say, but who needs it in real world ?
99% of consumers are happy with NT and are happy with samba.
See the generated revenue per marketshare as divided between
small-average-large bussinesses and you see, that there is very
little place for cutting edge software for file sharing.
People just solve software problems in hardware. I have constantly
problems getting Pentium 100Mhz to work full-loaded and
if I get, I replace it with Pentium 266.
For last two years there is more hardware and software power
that people can make use of. Interfaces and protocols
incompatibility and version instability is the only thing that keeps
the money coming from generic-purpose software(operating systems),
otherwise everybody just
would use linux and samba on top of it, however bad and inefective
it may sound from non-linux benchmarkers mouth. If fileserver
becomes slow, they replace it and take old to home for kids to play.
There is more general conclusion from that:
1. times of revolutionary
rapid changes in generic purpose(OS) software is over and there
will be one or two (binary and open source) generic purpose software
distributions in the world as fast as interoperability will be achieved.
2. It also means that besides MS, there will be no one who manages
to charge money for generic-prupose software and if full
interoprerability is achieved, neither do they.
3. A lots of programmers get fired and go back to roots - farming
work for example :)
4. Innovation currently generates new values, but public can not
make use of it in reasonable ways and therefore it will not be rewarded.
GPL(linux) may also go bancrupt in sense that if MS drops NT server
price down to 70$ and copies all new ideas, linux will be for freaks and
paranoid and MS can earn revenue from applications.
However, there is another possible way: 100% interoperability is achieved
and however ineffective the linux solution is, people will use that.
But the worst nightmare for linux would be if MS goes open source with its
OS. Because then US foreign affairs department will enforce strict copyrigth
laws and forging and stealing software will be made impossible and
all new ideas would be patented and bought up. You see, if binary software
is banned, that makes possible way more deep monopoly schemes.
And then it would be either GPL or MS (patent-or-legal-rights-buy-up-office)
who owns the software of the world.
elmer.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Sep 07 2000 - 21:00:20 EST