The funny thing is this...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| dinotrac May 15, 2006 8:13 AM EDT |
I don't begrudge actual software companies for keeping their software closed and proprietary. I wish they wouldn't, but that's a defensible business decision, especially for public companies with a duty to their stockholders. But... Others drive me nuts. I wish they would learn the IBM lesson: Giving things away can improve your bottom line. IBM is a great case in point because they most clearly are not some hippie commune that doesn't care about making money. They have identified things that, in their business judgement, must be kept proprietary. They have also given lots of stuff away. Oh...did I mention? They have made lots of money in the process. Giving things away is not unbusinesslike conduct. It doesn't "taint" you. It may even make you a lot of money by adding incentives for the market to find your "real" products. I still use Epson printers, and Epson didn't even make free drivers. They just more-or-less cooperated with the gimp-print team at a time when Hewlett-Packard's nicer ink-jets weren't very usable on Linux. Same for our Epson scanner. The green-eyeshade folks need to remember all those "expense" thingies under the category of R&D and support that can be off-loaded to the community for fun and profit. |
| grouch May 15, 2006 12:50 PM EDT |
dinotrac: >"The green-eyeshade folks need to remember all those "expense" thingies under the category of R&D and support that can be off-loaded to the community for fun and profit." We've seen ample evidence that bookkeepers make terrible CEOs. Think Disney and GM can recover? I also agree heartily with your use of IBM as an example. They went through their aberrant phase of trying to sell shrink-wrapped commodity software as if it is precious, scarce stuff. Lou seemed to quickly figure out that their real product was business solutions to business problems. That shrink-wrapped, artificial scarcity targetted the MS model, not business problems. It makes some business sense, in some situations, for niche software. (See, for example, idsoftware's release of source for their older games while selling their newest ones. Open implementations of the older ones increases interest for new ones, as well as taking over support and providing R&D as you pointed out). Selling a shrink-wrapped OS made no sense for IBM's core business after David Boyes (not to be confused with David Boies of SCOGdom) did his thing with Linux on an IBM mainframe. (See http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/interviews/3139/1/ ). |
| dinotrac May 15, 2006 1:23 PM EDT |
grouch - Well, GM did hire Bob Lutz and Disney more or less cried Uncle! to Pixar. Ya never know. |
| purplewizard May 16, 2006 7:03 AM EDT |
dinotrac wrote - "I don't begrudge actual software companies for keeping their software closed and proprietary. I wish they wouldn't, but that's a defensible business decision, especially for public companies with a duty to their stockholders." Considering the sharing notion of the article I find the "duty to the stockholders" interesting. I think business has become distorted and trade is no longer a way to best use resources but increasingly a means to make a small number ever richer. I look at business working to such concepts as "let the buyer beware" and think why aren't we working to the Christian phrasing (I'm atheist not that it matters) "do as you would be done by". Hence if you have enough to share without it hurting you or your nearest (adherence to the other notion of "first do no harm") you should share. I would go on and address "without it hurting" being interpreted as a balance for income versus ethical duty but I have work to do. |
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