On Nov 20, 4:27 pm, "Peter Becker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I personally think that: > - Karsten is right in that shrink-wrapped has the best margins and > still is a big market to make money in > - this market is dying fast, thus not the future as you claim (Karsten > didn't say that) > - you are right that Sun is ahead of the curve and suffering the > problems of being an early adopter
Why do you think that consumers / businesses don't want to pay for software anymore? I think they do. In fact, we just witnessed the birth of a new platform for that - Apple App Store which sold $30mln worth of software in its first 30 days (http://www.newsfactor.com/ story.xhtml?story_id=61264&full_skip=1). I think we as software developers have a jaded view of the world - we're tech savy, we use lots of open source software, and we think the rest of the world is just like us (that's why we generally suck at creating user interfaces). No, the rest of the world is different and, from what I can see, is quite happy to still pay for software. Why does Microsoft and IBM and Oracle still sell more software each year when you have free / open-source competitors for most of their products (OS, office software, collaboration, database, app server, tools, system management)? I think that open source software has pushed commercial software forward and replaced some of it, but I think they will co-exist for a very long time, maybe forever. What I do see happen is that a lof of desktop software moves into the "cloud" as web / Flex / Silverlight applications, but I think most of this will be subscription-based (except for a somewhat crippled free offering); there are only so many ads to go around, and Google servers most of them, which is why Google can afford to give most of their products away for free. Karsten --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
