[SC.LUG] Interesting article in the Guardian

[Jason Lucas]

To quote part of the article:

"And without a Stallman-style ideological commitment, it is hard to see
why any bright young programmer with a brilliant idea should decide not
to become a billionaire and give it all away. Logically, open source
will result in a software industry that is not just without significant
profits but without the profit motive. It will be interesting to see if
it works." 
 
I think that the columnist also mis-understands the way software is
developed these days. It is unlikely just one person will come up with
some fantastic new software idea. Software development just doesn't work
like that. I think that days of 'you too could become as rich as Bill
Gates' are long gone. It's now a mature, saturated market - if you want
to make a fast buck, look elsewhere.

J.


On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 18:12, David Holden wrote:
> On Thursday 08 Jan 2004 5:48 pm, Jason Lucas wrote:
> > Food for thought:
> >
> > http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1117835,00.html
> >
> > Jason.
> >
> 
> yeh I replied to this article as its demostrates another "tech" columnist who 
> really does not get opensource/free software.
> 
> 
> I mean what does this mean
> 
> "The open source movement currently has no way of developing independent 
> software architectures, or even of performing simple usability testing. And 
> it shows."
> 
> has he not heard of perl/python apache all of which there is nothing in the 
> proprietry world that comes close to their capabilities.
> 
> 
> He also states that all open source does is clone proprietry software. well 
> this is true to a certain extent but there is a reason for this and it stems 
> from the initial motivation of free software which was to develop open 
> source/free software equivalents of closed source systems that gives the user 
> the freedom to "modify, improve, learn from and share their 
> improved software" (quoting Richard S.).
>  
>   Dave.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >
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