Going Broke with Free Software

Post #213,384 by bluke 7/3/05 9:02:03 AM Reply	Going Broke with Free Software [link\|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1833612,00.asp\|Going Broke with Free Software] Opinion: Open-source developers are facing hard times both because the money that flows through open-source often isn't reaching their wallets and because not enough people are paying even the nominal amounts requested by open-source vendors. \t "Free software is not a good way to make money." ... I'm reporting what a major open-source developer told me recently. ... Yes, many developers are doing it for the love of it, but that and $2 will buy you a cup of coffee. Serious open-source programmers need serious financial support. Another reason is that far, far too many people treat free software as free as in beer as well as in speech. Yes, you can pay nothing for most open-source software, but if you want to see the next and better version of it, you'd better start paying something for it. ... If people don't start supporting open-source software with more than just lip service\ufffd well, there will be a lot more leading open-source programmers heading to proprietary companies. It's not that they don't believe in free software. They do. They also believe in putting a roof over their head. Who can blame them? He is being naive. Why pay for something when it is being offered for free? What business is going to pay for free software so that there is a next version. I have felt this way for a long time. Sooner or later open source is going to kill itself, it will be so successful that no one will be willing to pay for software and then how will developers pay their rent? Open source is nice (I am writing this using Mozilla Firefox) but it has reached a point where it is very very hard to compete. Take the Java IDE market, anyone who has used IntelliJ will agree that it is still ahead of Eclipse, yet Eclipse is blowing it away because Eclipse is open source and free. How much longer do you think JetBrains can stay in business competing against Eclipse and Netbeans, both of which are free? What happens to those very talented programmers at JetBrains? Whenever there is an IDE discussion, people lament how they would love to use IntelliJ but that they can't justify the cost when Eclipse is free. Open Source is moving upmarket. Linux has taken over the low end server market and is moving up. The J2EE Appserver market is also being taken over by open source, JBoss and others, how is a company like BEA going to survive. MySql is slowly but surely moving up the chain and will soon be threatening Oracle Everyone is going to answer support, that is ridiculous, support cannot support all the programmers out there. Other people will say, the majority of developers work for companies doing custom development, they won't be affected. That is also not true. The level of technical expertise needed for business development has dropped dramatically. Here is a good example. I went to work for a major US bank in 1997 to help develop a Java based applet for a major trading system. They wanted an applet because the application had to be rolled out to sites all around the world to locked down desktops. A Java applet was a dream solution, we could roll out the app on our schedule and the next time the user logged in they got the new app. This was major league development. We built a UI framework on top of AWT and then on top of Swing. We built a distributed Objects framework, etc. Fast forward to 2005, today to develop a system like that much of the hard work is done. The frameworks all exist, the level of developer expertise needs to be much lower. Who is going to pay for top notch talent today? The irony is that it is big companies that are benefiting most from open source. IBM is making billions off Linux, how much are Linux developers making? RedHat is making a lot of money off Linux but who else is (especially smaller companies or developers)? I don't think there has ever been a profession that has killed itself like software developers who are just giving everything away for free.
Post #213,385 by Another Scott 7/3/05 9:43:22 AM Reply	It's really nothing new. I don't think there has ever been a profession that has killed itself like software developers who are just giving everything away for free. I've heard it argued that dentistry is a field where they are also working to put themselves out of business. Hence the need to come up with new services (bleaching, etc.). As industries mature, they need fewer people. That's why it's important to continually come up with new and better products and services. Free software is great for building a baseline infrastructure for future advancements. But it's generally not the way to inspire someone to take risks and strike out to build their new empire and make millions. As you say, everyone in software can't be in support. Remember when Ford ruled with the [link\|http://www.musclecarclub.com/other-cars/classic/ford-model-t/ford-model-t.shtml\|Model T]? Whenever Chevrolet or some other manufacturer seemed to be making an inroad on Henry's market share, he'd simply drop the price of the Model T. It worked great for a while - but eventually low cost (as low as $290) wasn't enough. It's similar with software. It's hard to compete with free, but it can be done. I suspect many/most software houses (even Microsoft) will eventually move to the Trolltech-type model where there's a free version and a less-restrictive/more-capable/better-supported version that costs $$$. The free version will help maintain market interest (and keep pressure on competitors) while the pay version will keep people employed. Note that this model is used by The Economist as well - there's a relatively inexpensive weekly [link\|http://www.economist.com/\|news magazine] and an expensive, business-oriented research arm (the [link\|http://store.eiu.com/index.asp\|Economist Intelligence Unit]). My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #213,388 by Andrew Grygus 7/3/05 10:50:27 AM Reply	Evolution in action. There are always new ways forming as the old fade away. The clever and adaptable will find a way to make money, the others . . . When I started out in computers 25 years ago, all the money was in selling hardware. Today I could care less where the client gets most of his hardware - I'll make more if he buys it from someone else because then it doesn't bother me to charge him a lot of money to make it work. Today I handle phone systems, cabling, medical instrument interfacing and particularly emergency service. I'm doing better than I was back in the hardware days, but most of the people from back then, nearly all the computer stores, many distributors and software firms, large numbers of technicians, they're all gone now. Where? I don't know - the economy absorbed them somewhere. Of course technical people and programmers have a special problem. Most chose those fields to avoid having to deal so much with people and certainly don't feel good about promoting themselves. Those who learn to will do well, the others will drive trucks or something. Of course a good programmer has the trained memory, grasp of logic and event scheduling to be an excellent short order cook (a very demanding job indeed), but a programmer that good probably probably has a job. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]

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