Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 04:32:38PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > Your model is fine, there is nothing wrong with it but there isn't a lot
> > right with it either.  You can't really grow your business under that 
> > model.
> 
> I don't disagree with this statement, but I don't see its relevance.
> What inference can you make from this? 
> 
> Are you asserting that the trend toward commoditisation of software
> isn't real -- that companies are _not_ becoming less inclined to pay to
> license proprietary software when there is a Free alternative which they
> can use instead? Or merely that it makes you unhappy?

Creating software costs money.
Open source doesn't produce very much money.
A world in which all software is produced via support contracts doesn't
look like a world in which there is very much new software.

Yes, that makes me unhappy.  I like programming, I like being paid to
do it.  I've done the consulting gig and that's a crappy way to live,
you don't make enough money to actually fix things, you make enough to
hack things so they sort of work.  No customer is going to pay you to
rearchitect GCC when what they want is support for their new chip.

That's probably a good enough test case.  Explain to me how your support
contracts are ever going to provide enough money to redo GCC or build
something equally substantial.

I'm not saying that you can't make a living doing support, you obviously
can.  I'm saying that it doesn't produce enough income to do what needs
to be done.  If it did then CVS would be BK, for example.