> Hi all, > > After a long discussion with someone about the GPL and the open source > model of business, he raised a point which i cant find any very valid > argument, maybe you guys will be able to gimme your point on this: > > The idea is that developping free sofware leads the author to it's own > professional death: if the opensource movement works to it's extreme > extend, what will happens to the company that sell whatever proprietary > sofware ? It's faith is death or recycling. As most of the opensource > developpers are professionals, this directly leads them to a no job > future. The extended idea he raises is that developping an opensource > software simply cut any value of the work we do. > > My point of view is that the business model of a simple software > engineering company will have to move towards service integration and > consultancy, but this is true that in a way this movement may lead a major > change in the industry.
RMS has an article on this somewhere, but the basic idea is that the majority of programmers are not employed creating retail proprietary software (ie for companies like MS), they are employed in things like service intergration/consultancy and supporting in house applications. Open source would lead to more of these programmers, not less, since companies are able to rely on their own programmers to support Linux rather than relying on MSs programmers to support Windows. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
