The people who will make he final call on FOSS are the end users, especially corporate end users who are not in the software or IT business.
Those users pay (and will pay) for custom solutions for their business. Free (as in gratis) software only mean that they reduce their lock-in with software vendors, but does not mean it will change their relations with ISVs.
Consider: if a customer pays an ISV xK$ for an MS (or Websphre, or Oracle) solution, then yK$ is reduced from the cost of the solution for licensing and support.
If the ISV charges now xK$-(yK$/2) for the same solution based on a FOSS solution, the client pays less, and the ISV can use the (yK$/2) as profit, or use it to enhance the FOSS solution (with money or effort).
This is a win-win (pardon the pun) situation.
Now the burden of proof lies with the ISV to show that using a commercial product does make financial sense.
Shlomi Fish wrote:
One quote in the recent presentation by Christopher Hamilton Bidmead's caught my eye. It said that by the year 2004, there will be more developers developing on Linux than on Windows. I found it very interesting, and went to the URL that specified that. Eventually I brought it up on the Joel-on-Software forum:
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=98232&ixReplies=38
Now, the Joel-on-Software forum (which is done very nicely) attract a great deal of vocal advocates of both Windows and Linux. An interesting development of the thread was this:
Will the proliferation of Open-Source Software cause programmers to earn more money or less money? Will it create job or eliminate them?
Now, some arguments were made that because a business gets a software for free, he will expect the hackers who have to make it work, to work very cheaply as well. Other arguments were, that the high accessibility of software will make programmers who can make it work become in higher demand. (thus possibly increasing their salary).
I took the pro-higher-demand side (naturally).
Happy Civil New Year Everybody!
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Writing a BitKeeper replacement is probably easier at this point than getting its license changed.
Matt Mackall on OFTC.net #offtopic.
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