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For the record: if you want to set the rules, start your own damn forum.

.tsooJ

Alien wrote:

For the record: if you want to set the rules, start your own damn forum.

Sorry

I would say it's the balance of FOSS, shareware and commercial apps that keeps things healthy. They fill each other's gaps and force each other to improve in order to maintain competitiveness and growth.

Point #1: Open source software is developed by people who are either (a) independently wealthy or, more likely, (b) have ample free time that they are willing to devote to a project that they will not be paid for, while also working a day job that does pay them.

And?

Point #2: Being that open source software is not subject to the economic laws of supply and demand when it is offered for free, allowing open source products to mix with the commercial market stifles development of commercial products by depriving the professional software industry of revenue ($60 billion so far according to the Standish Group). As FOSS continues to increase its market share beyond its current 6%, it is having an increasingly destabilizing effect on the software industry as a result.

Im going to throw a pre-emptive strike here and declare your argument to be a luddite fallacy.
Suppose that the entire corporate software industry went out of buisness, there would  be a large amount of people and real estate available for other, more productive activities.

Point #3: Corporations have greater accountability for their products, and there is also much higher expectation as to documentation and tech support.

Can i sue microsoft whenever windows nukes my hard drive? No, i can't because i signed a questionably legal eula stating that i can't sue them when windows causes damages of some sort. As for documentation and tech support, if it is needed, the market will create it.

Point #4: FOSS rarely provides "official" tech support, allowing message boards, mailing lists, and other user-driven fora to serve as the main problem-solving resources.  Message boards and mailing lists are inherently more poorly-organized solution providers than manuals.

Corporate users of open source software usually use those products for which tech support is available, or they roll their own. As for desktop use (myself included), people don't consult a manual, they type the problem into google.

Point #5: FOSS often does not provide up-to-date documentation, and the docs that are available are likely to be incomplete as well.  Naturally, FOSS does not employ paid documentation writers, although this is common in the corporate sector because of the inability of programmers to write lengthy docs for all of their work.

And the point is?

Point #6: In light of the relatively poor attention that is given to FOSS compared to its commercial kin, there has been a barrier to greater numbers of users switching to FOSS solutions.  However, most of the barrier is a problem of awareness among non-savvy computer users, not a refusal to use software that is not fully documented or supported.  This barrier of a lack of awareness is likely to lessen over time as a new generation of computer users both is aware of, and expects, more and more products and services to be delivered free of cost to the end-user.

"more and more products and services to be delivered free of cost to the end-user."
Thats a good thing, you know.

Point #7: It is a long-standing economic reality that a majority of consumers will use a product that is cheaper even if it is somewhat lower in quality than a higher-priced alternative, but not much lower in quality.  The market naturally favors products that provide an "optimum" ratio of quality to price.  FOSS provides products that are generally at least acceptable in quality, and have no price point at all.  Therefore, they can wildly skew the market in their favor even though their downsides are potentially dangerous (see following two points).

Always bet on the cheap plastic, because it will climb the power curve and win. Its called disruptive technology.

Point #8: FOSS projects are prone to disorganization and frequent abandonment by contributors.  For projects that are maintained by a handful of developers, or only one, the potential for a disruption in providing updates and bug fixes is a constant threat.  Since corporations fill jobs in a hierarchical manner, with paid and benefited employees, turnover and disorganization are significantly less common.  This results in a more stable product with a longer-term guarantee of support for the end-user.  Companies need to use software with such support; in the case of an emergency with a piece of FOSS, obtaining solutions by way of user-based fora is not considered acceptably fast or acceptably authoritative in its results.

Being disorganized is not necessarily a bad thing. The burden of proof is on you to prove the harmful effects of being disorganized.
As for the abandonment by contributors, the whole point of open source is that anyone can pick up the source code and modify it. I can do it myself if necessary. If Linus Torvalds suddenly decided to quit working on linux, someone else would step up into the big seat.
As for corporations, i have a heap of old dos games which have no support because the developer either ignores it or doesn't exist anymore. I use dosbox (which happens to be open source! ) to run these games,

Point #9: The very nature of FOSS is a goldmine for virus writers and hackers who can examine the source code with no need to even reverse-engineer a compiled product.  As market share of FOSS products increase, the potential for widespread damage done by viruses increases.  If FOSS is in use at an office, it is providing yet another "in" for hackers, besides the OS itself (by far, usually Windows), because offices rarely keep their computers' security holes fully patched or even nearly fully patched.

Oh come on! That argument is as old as the dinosaurs! And again, the burden of proof is on you.
I'm not going to shoot that argument untill i have a clear target.

Point #10: Programming free software can be called an act of altruism; however, the monetary benefit to each individual is no greater than the cost of the commercial software that the FOSS provides a free alternative to.  At the same time, this act of seeming altruism denies paying work to authors of shareware products that may have offered the same features, but for a small price.  The cost to those programmers on an individual basis is potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars.  With enough FOSS products available, the opportunities for paid non-corporate work will decline sharply.  Therefore, when viewed on an individual basis, FOSS does far more monetary harm than good.  The work being done by programmers who can afford to program for free defeats the potential for work by programmers who wish to use their skills in exchange for remuneration, which is a basic right that capitalism is intended to offer every citizen.

If you can't compete, you will go out of buisness and then get another job.
Capitalism at its finest.

Point #11: When viewed on a societal basis, that is, the good it does for society as a whole, FOSS provides little demonstrable benefit.  It is often unsuitable for, or undesired by, corporations due to the lack of support, therefore FOSS contributes little in the way of true cost savings that would benefit the economy.  The benefit to the mass of end-users is the saving of a modest amount of money that is unlikely to encourage them to spend that money on other software, therefore the economy does not benefit on that basis either.

People develop free software on their free time, i dont see how that does any harm. Would it be better if those developers did nothing?

Last edited by catchy name (2008-11-24 11:32 am)

Dang, you guys post fast, it's hard to keep up.  Well, I'll keep trying.

Some people seem to deliberately be unwilling to follow my points; some points were there to set up for later points.  I separated them out as statements that could be challenged or accepted individually before moving on to subsequent points that built on those points.

catchy name wrote:

People develop free software on their free time, i dont see how that does any harm. Would it be better if those developers did nothing?

That was my controversial assertion, yes.  It would be better on the whole if they did nothing, although doing something else is even better than nothing.

Iritscen wrote:

And in response to StaticAge, you are saying that many jobs eventually go "extinct", which is undeniable... are you saying/admitting that this would hold true at least for shareware programming, if not programming at the corporate level?

It holds true for any and every sort of labor, so, yes.

Parallels: Desktop Product Sales Have Surpassed One Millon (copies)

Here is the free alternative.

Once again, whether you consider it bartering or not, software defies those rules because it is able to be copied infinitely and without degradation from copy to copy.  I would be unhappy if one kid was willing to mow every lawn in the world for a glass of lemonade.  That's the proper analogy.

@ScifiterX: Those products semi-compete, but not entirely.  Parallels and Fusion and CrossOver allow simultaneous use of Windows apps alongside Mac apps.  I have Boot Camp (of course), and still bought Parallels and CO because I wanted the convenience.

Iritscen wrote:

Once again, whether you consider it bartering or not, software defies those rules because it is able to be copied infinitely and without degradation from copy to copy.  I would be unhappy if one kid was willing to mow every lawn in the world for a glass of lemonade.  That's the proper analogy.

@ScifiterX: Those products semi-compete, but not entirely.  Parallels and Fusion and CrossOver allow simultaneous use of Windows apps alongside Mac apps.  I have Boot Camp (of course), and still bought Parallels and CO because I wanted the convenience.

Either you dont adequately understand economy or you dont understand copyright.

For years people have been able to read books without buying them, play songs other people wrote without paying for it and so on. Think for a second how anyone anywhere can quietly memorize a poem and recite it anytime, anywhere; or learn to play a song they heard on an instrument over and over without having to hear the original artist. Yet, books and music have also been valuable in in the economy. Thats the proper analogy to make, because its a similar set of laws set up to protect the interests of the artist/programmers. Intellectual property is such that it is their right to offer it free if they want to.

Last edited by StaticAge (2008-11-24 12:44 pm)

That was my controversial assertion, yes.  It would be better on the whole if they did nothing, although doing something else is even better than nothing.

I already debunked that argument (look for the luddite fallacy part)

ScifiterX wrote:

Most FOSS only semi competes. The GIMP semi competes with Photoshop actual sales of Photoshop haven't really suffered to it because while there is overlap in the GIMPS & PhotoShop's provides services that give it a place & value. PhotoShop piracy has no doubt dropped a bit due to the GIMPs existence however.

I'm not sure if the GIMP project really has any corporate sponsorship. It still seems like a true community project. There is an add-on called "GIMP shop", that remaps all the controls to look like Photoshop - but most GIMP users seem to prefer the somewhat odd control scheme.

This, frankly, is why I don't get the uproar from proprietary software vendors regarding FOSS. The vast majority of it works fine, but doesn't  have the spit and polish of a commercial release. You really have to be peddling crap to see any serious competition from a FOSS project. The few projects that really take on commercial vendors are largely sponsored by companies, and in some cases, the coders actually work for the sponsoring organization.

This last bit could be troubling, since the corporate sponsor could be accused of dumping, but again; the license makes it difficult to leverage the dump in a way that is anti-consumer.

Also, the vast majority of software doesn't run on PC's. It runs in other devices. That world will likely remain proprietary indefinitely. Outside of Wifi routers, and other network appliances that are essentially specialty computers, the bulk of those software tasks involve absurdly specialized hardware that is likely uninviting to the average hacker.

StaticAge wrote:

Either you dont adequately understand economy or you dont understand copyright.

For years people have been able to read books without buying them, play songs other people wrote without paying for it and so on. Think for a second how anyone anywhere can quietly memorize a poem and recite it anytime, anywhere; or learn to play a song they heard on an instrument over and over without having to hear the original artist.

First of all, nobody is allowed to copy a book for free.  If you're referring to reading a book taken out from the library for free, hello, tax dollars at work?  That book's not free.

Also, people cannot freely copy each other's songs.  Private performance is one thing, but doing it for profit is another.  Perhaps I miss your point here because I don't see how it's connected to the discussion.

Jded wrote:

How many copies of halo has Kongregate undercut by the free software they issue?

As I said, games are different.  I already went into some detail about that.  See my post two posts before this one.

radarman wrote:

You really have to be peddling crap to see any serious competition from a FOSS project.

Ouch.  Sure, I have my gripes with Blender's insane interface, but you know what?  Learning a corporate-developed 3D tool is rarely easier.  XSI SoftImage's got some user-friendliness issues itself.  Besides, as I said, a consumer will sacrifice something intangible like user-friendliness when it comes to free alternatives.  But if I thought that FOSS was so low-quality that it was deterring people from using it, I wouldn't have started this thread.  I felt that the barrier was awareness, a barrier that is decreasing steadily.