a dangerous question
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| mbaehrlxer Feb 16, 2016 12:54 AM EDT |
Quoting:Can we allow a private company to offer their services for free to the state, whereas some other companies are forced to bill those services ? while this may seem like a fair question at first, this can be turned at any company offering their software for free. what if microsoft decides to offer windows for free to anyone, to compete against linux distributions which are free now? are we going to ask for laws to ban that? and will companies then still be allowed to offer linux distributions for free? i think the problem is not the offering of free services, but the offering of different prices to different customers for the same product. i understand that the USA has laws against bulk-discounts which is why they offer discount coupons to anyone. europe has laws against taking advantage of a monopolistic situation that are a bit stronger than in the USA, but we haven't seen much use of them lately. i thought france was one of the strongest defenders against monopolies so this move is particularly surprising. greetings, eMBee. |
| cybertao Feb 16, 2016 6:23 AM EDT |
I think the correct question to ask in a situation like that is, "Why is this company offering their services to government?" |
| nmset Feb 16, 2016 9:16 AM EDT |
>i thought france was one of the strongest defenders against monopolies so this move is particularly surprising. I'm not surprised, this is the worst government this country has ever had. >"Why is this company offering their services to government?" Prepare students to become future customers, that's still fair business. The only arguable point : there were no public tender from a public player. |
| NoDough Feb 16, 2016 10:21 AM EDT |
mbaehrlxer wrote:what if microsoft decides to offer windows for free to anyone Yeah, like that would ever happen! |
| mbaehrlxer Feb 16, 2016 12:41 PM EDT |
well, in this context it's a rhetorical question, but yes exactly. they claim it's temporary for now, but it will be permanent eventually. consider what are microsofts most interesting products. it's not windows. it's office, and developer tools (which are getting more free already). and their cloud stuff. the rest are niche products. at the moment it looks like cloud is making them the most money. and office sales are hurt by people dropping windows (notably XP). i guess companies are not upgrading (are they switching to linux?). now they have reached the point that they can't get people to upgrade unless it's free, and some day they will need to try to spread windows by making it free entirely, and eventually they'll just have to port office. microsoft is starting to get Free Software licenses. .net has been freed. typescript has been a Free Software project from the beginning. people said that too would never happen, but reports of a horned figure on ice-skates are increasing. greetings, eMBee. |
| skelband Feb 16, 2016 12:54 PM EDT |
They're realising like everyone else that there's no money in software in the future. The future is services, like it really was all the time. That reality has never really changed, it was just hidden for a while. |
| NoDough Feb 16, 2016 3:22 PM EDT |
skelband wrote:The future is services, like it really was all the time. That reality has never really changed, it was just hidden for a while. I don't think so. The future is data. That's why Win10 is free, but to use it you must agree to let them know everything about you. [edit - corrected spelling error] |
| skelband Feb 16, 2016 4:07 PM EDT |
> I don't think so. The future is data. That's why Win10 is free, but to use it you must agree to let them know everything about you. That's not really incompatible with what I said. The service Google et al provides is to their advertisers; the data is a means to an end. The data is a consumable with limited life. Therefore, they need to keep obtaining and selling it. That's about as good a definition of service as it gets. That's a world away from writing software, then selling it for profit, which is in many ways money for old rope and not really sustainable in the long term against free software alternatives. |
| kikinovak Feb 22, 2016 2:48 AM EDT |
France is generally quite open to FOSS, that is except the infamous "Éducation Nationale", where technical decisions are made by a bunch of idiots. |
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