Re: Is free software good for developers?

An interesting post..

Certainly I would agree that the price of mass-market software will continue
to reduce towards zero and that the market price for *all* software will do
the same (though at a slower rate)... You will witness that Microsoft are
relying less and less on their core "cash-cows" (Windows and Office) for
their income and profit and moving more into more "niche" market software as
well as services...

For software developers such as myself, the value we provide is to provide
highly vertical market (rather than horizontal) targetted products which are
less likely to be attacked by "free" competitors. At the same time, less
of our income comes from software and more from services. This trend will
continue. Personally, I don't necessarily think this is bad news.... It
shouldn't be bad news for contractors either - they will just get more
projects customising and supporting "free" software rather than writing from
scratch.

Regards
Simon
<Anthony.Youngman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1141990348.956492.209540@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Kevin Powick wrote:
Do you think that free, as in no cost, software is good for developers
and the software market in general?

Even though many Open Source (OS) products are zero cost, this is not
intended as an OS debate.

My personal take on it is that free software is not necessarily a good
thing.

Fortunately, it is an economic inevitability ...

I used to be amazed at those providing free software. I used to think
those people were crazy and obviously had other, "real" jobs to put a
roof over their head. I was mostly ambivalent towards them and happy
to occasionally use the fruits of their labour.

"Real" jobs, like programming?

However, in the last little while, I've decided that those people
really annoy me. While they may put no monetary value on their time,
the only significant resource required to create free software, I do.

What incentive is their for a software company or small developer to
pour resources (time=money) into creating a great product, only to have
some group of idealists create a free knock-off? There is no
innovation in copying someone else's work.

And there's innovation in the commercial world? There's a lot of
innovation in the Free world, including much of what the commercial
world takes for granted. Commercial software has been around for, what,
30 years? free software has been around a lot longer than that.

For the really big/complex software such as operating systems I suppose
commercial companies can still fight back by lowering the product
prices and then charging for great support, but small developers really
get screwed. In every software related newsgroup I frequent, any time
someone is posting for a solution, 99% of the time they stipulate that
they would "prefer" a free solution - And nowadays, they often get it.

Economics says you're wrong ...

I can think of no other industry where this happens. You would never
have a group of people providing free cars, houses, or food.

As Dawn said, "the music industry says 'Hi'". Been to a pub with live
music lately? Or a restaurant with a pianist? Or even, what I do, down
to the local park with a bandstand (you'll see me on several over the
summer :-)

The idea of completely free software is somewhat flawed and, IMO, hurts
the software industry by stifling innovation and stunting the
creation/growth of solid and reliable software companies.

Sorry if this seems like a rant, but I just had a customer tell me
today that he thought one of my products was a "little" expensive
($1,500), especially considering some of the free alternatives out
there. Of course, not 20 minutes earlier, he was beaming about the
$400,000 they just dropped on a new machine for their assembly line
that will give them an edge over their competition.

I feel your pain - they spend thousands on equipment, and begrudge the
hundreds on the software. But ...

What percentage of programmers get paid for writing software for sale?
And what percentage get paid for writing stuff for in-house use?
According to ESR, the latter is 95% - ie 95 cents in the dollar spent
on programmers is overhead, not investment. And if they share their
work then that cost - that drain on resources - can be cut
significantly!

How many people does it take to write "that great piece of software"
like the OS you mentioned above? Yep, you need a lot of skills, but DOS
was written by one person, Unix was written by two or three, Linux was
written by one person ... you only need a small team.

I don't know how much my company spends on infrastructure software
every year - things like Windows, Office, SQL-Server etc - all basic,
packaged stuff. We could probably employ two or three programmers for
that money, and we're only an SME. Share that effort with a few other
similar sized companies, and we could probably write all that software
ourselves. Share that effort with HUNDREDS of companies over the 'net,
and we'd probably only need to spend a hundredth of that money (and get
far better results!). That's just what is happening. And the commercial
interests just CAN'T compete.

If it's commodity software you're selling, better hope you're in a
niche because otherwise it's in your customers' interest to cut you
(the middleman between them and their software) out! Even if they have
to PAY the "enthusiast" a DECENT wage to write it for them.

Oh - the other economic law to bear in mind? "Market value tends
towards the marginal cost of producing another unit". In other words,
economics says the only *sustainable* price you will get away with
charging for your software, is the cost of your materials (the CD) and
the time (20 minutes) you spent copying it for your next customer.

And as for why *customers* want free software? Well, as a customer I
personally am sick and tired of pouring resources (namely money) into
buying software that (a) is worse than the stuff it replaces, (b)
doesn't work, and (c) wastes my time. I'd much rather throw those
resources at something free that does most of what I want, and fix it
to be exactly what I want. Actually, that's how the economics of Free
Software works - rather than waste my resources on closed software that
doesn't work, I spend THE SAME resources making free software do
exactly what I want. And seeing as that effort is sunk cost to me, I
have no difficulty or problem sharing my work with others - I'm not
going to make any money from selling it, after all (and I may make
money if someone sees it and says "I need something similar, here's a
contract, sign here please" :-)

Cheers,
Wol



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