Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 21:22:37 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: "FreeBSD Questions" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Thanks guys Message-ID: <032701c28b52$69054f50$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <20021113055636.76357.qmail@web21305.mail.yahoo.com> <1037168694.263.3.camel@asa.gascom.net.ru> <000e01c28af3$35060c30$1baccecd@donatev49iknkl> <20021113104844.GA1869@raggedclown.net> <028701c28b07$d8036bd0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <002301c28b0c$359598a0$1baccecd@donatev49iknkl> <02bf01c28b15$9b7cb2d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <20021113194736.GA3643@falcon.midgard.homeip.net>
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Erik writes: > You incorrectly assume that all those day jobs > involve writing software. I've made no such assumption. > It is quite possible for a volunteer writing > open source code to have a day job that does not have > anything at all to do with computers. There isn't any part of the economy today that has nothing at all to do with computers. With no one making money selling software, there would definitely be an effect on the economy as a whole. > You also incorrectly seem to assume that all > proprietary software is written to be sold > at retail. I've made no such assumption. > You can also consider all the software for > embedded systems, where the software is not the > primary product, but some physical device utilising > the software. I covered that with mainframes. > Not necessarily. You could develop software > on order for some customer that needs some special > software that is not available off the shelf. > Then, after they get the software they wanted > and you got paid, the source is released. Except that customers are not too keen on paying you big bucks for software that you'll be giving away for free to everyone else once it is developed. > You get paid, your customer got the software > they wanted, anybody who wants to can get the > source. Everybody is happy. No, the customer is unhappy, because he paid for software that you gave away to everyone else. > One kind of software where proprietary off-the= > shelf software does have a place is software > that the average open-source programmer finds > boring ... And, unfortunately, that covers just about every useful software product in existence. Few programmers are chomping at the bit with desire to write code for the next version of Microsoft Word. > Examples of this class of software is things > like spreadsheets, word processors and presentation > programs. The programs that get the lion's share of use on most computers, you mean? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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