On 9/24/2000 at 1:15 AM [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> IMHO I think it is ridiculous to think that "Open Source" projects
can be cloned by each newbie-programmer.
This is an important point. What many people who write code overlook is
that the marketplace still considers software applications an
investment (as opposed to a disposable commodity). They are not just
buying the software product that is shipping today, but the support and
upgrades that go with it. The reason so many products are going open
source now is because people realize that the source really isn't worth
that much. The world is full of source. The value is with the
organization or community that distributes and supports the software.
Source is a commodity; Products are an investment.
If MS released the source for Excel, people would still rather buy the
official distribution for $50 or $100 then pay less from an unknown
source. This is one reason Sun's StarOffice isn't taking the corporate
world by storm -- there isn't a lot of desktop support in place for the
product, and that's where people spend the real bucks - training and
customization.
-Ted.
