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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] AOL and things(was Zine-Writer)
From:       Christopher Molnar <molnarc () nebsllc ! com>
Date:       2001-06-20 12:30:28
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Good article. However, I doubt we are going to see a GPL version of AOL
and I think that if we (the Linux community) will only accept that we
will never see an AOL for linux. Let's let them release SOMETHING and
not just say we will only accept if it is open source. Quite frankly
most users do not care if it is open source, hell they do not even know
what it means. If they get the AOL frisbee (cd) in the mail and it
installs on Linux they will be happy.

[/rant mode on]
Overall the linux community needs to realize that while open source is
great, and the gpl, is great there is a lot of good software that we
will never see if we only accept gpl/open source products to use.
Companies who have spent millions developing products are not going to
overnight turn around and say "here's the source code". Companies need
to take care of their employees/developers/sales people/etc and the open
source community as a whole has not been good at doing this. There has
to be an income potential directly related to GPL'ing the product and I
for one (I just know I am going to get royally flamed here) can not see
the income potential for AOL GPL'ing their product, versus just
recompiling and re-releasing for free on the Linux platform. From a
corporate standpoint there is no difference between open source and
free-ware. As a matter of fact open source is more dangerous for the
bottom line - it opens them to a lot of competition that they do not
want.

I actually think the Kompany has the right idea. Develop commercial
software for Linux. People are saving money on the OS, but someone needs
to pay for the development and feed the developers. I think KDE and the
Linux community would do very well at saying "Look, here is a great
platform for you to release your product on. We will help you do it, we
will not nag you about GPL, Open Source, etc. We want your users to use
our OS".

Sorry, folks for saying all of this, but this is the result of several
conversations that I have had with several upper level IT people in some
rather large companies. While open source is nice for the end users, low
cost, frequent updates, and decent support (most of the time) for a
company it offers a way for a competitor to get insight on their
business strategy. It also offers other companies the ability to copy
their product for little or no development costs. The open source / gpl
model means that a company will not make money from selling their
software, they will only make money from selling the support services
coming along with the software (training, installation, setup, etc). 
However, if you look at all the Open Source companies around, how many
of them are currently self-sufficient AND are making this work? Probably
only one - Red Hat. However, where are they getting the product, and how
are they getting the product? Yes, RedHat is putting a lot of money into
development, but are they releasing everything they develop back to open
source? No. Are they sending money to each and every open source
developer that puts time and effort into a product they sell? No. So,
RedHat - like all the other open source companies - has an army of
developers that they are not paying.

/me was at a user group the other day where people wouldn't even let me
get through a presentation on KDE they where complaining about missing
features - "windows does this, why can't KDE" - and stuff. I asked how
many people in the room knew C++ and about 25% of those that where
complaining raised their hands. I suggested that they write some of the
missing features and contribute. I got, "don't have time", "there are
developers paid to do this", and "if I wanted to go through that trouble
I would develop on Windows where I could sell the product". Think we are
missing something here? 

[/rant mode off]

Flames, attacks, etc will go to /dev/null

-Chris

blackfarm wrote:
> 
> Heres an article on what we were discussing about aol and kde.
> http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/11362.html
> 
> Craig
> 
> _______________________________________________
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