A profound analysis, Björn. Having watched it being developed from close-up, I wouldn't say "the PC changed all that" though. The PC was a tardy admission that the world had changed. I heard it that IBM, shocked at discovering it was the customer for half the world's production of non-IBM microcomputers, set out to build a microcomputer just like everyone else's.
FYI the publishing industry is in much the same state as the software industry. There is so much free stuff on the Web, better than what you can buy between covers, that we're moving towards a model where writing and publishing gives its products away free and lives off the fallout -- or the begging bowl. Feeling the pinch, the big publishers are concentrating on predictably profitable titles, i.e. for stuffy customers, which is only going to hammer more nails in their coffin. Ian 2010/3/8 Björn Helgason <[email protected]>: > Everything is relative. > > IBM was ruled by and based on hardware. > > The prising was such that software prices were only a relatively small > amount compared to the price of hardware. > > This is before the PC. > > The PC changed all that. > > The profit of selling one big computer was more than selling one million PCs. > > We who were in software development had to abide to the rule of the > hardware people, their rules and needs. > > The software may have cost a lot of money but compared to the hardware > it was cheap. > > Obviously software was needed as a lubricant for the hardware. > > Nowadays the situation is the opposite and customers demand certain > software and service and even IBM supports competitors hardware. > > Even software prices are under a lot of pressure and open software > that is free or nearly free is making it difficult for those who want > to get a lot of money for software. > > Especially as the quality of free and open software is such that it > can not be ignored. > > Obviously software development is not completely free so how to get > money working with it is a very difficult question. > > Also how you learn how to use software is ever more difficult where > all these little gadgets come along and the attention span of > potential users is very short. > > Even our great labs and demos in J seem to be too much for many. > > If they can not immediately take a demo and make it a part of their > own application they loose interest and go somewhere else. > > It is interesting to see that interest in J and some APL dialects > seems to be rising but it is not as great as I would hope it to be. > > 2010/3/8 Ian Clark <[email protected]>: >> I didn't think they could do that. >> >> In the 60s IBM always gave away software. Wasn't the entire software >> industry founded by the 1969 anti-trust consent decree where IBM >> agreed to stop doing so, and charge a proper price? >> >> Ian >> >> >> 2010/3/8 Björn Helgason <[email protected]>: >>> Software more or less >>> given away because the sale was hardware (99%) and that was 100% IBM >>> hardware. >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >> > > > > -- > Björn Helgason, Verkfræðingur > Fornustekkum II > 781 Hornafirði > Po Box 127,801 Selfoss , > t-póst: [email protected] > gsm: +3546985532 > sími: +3544781286 > http://groups.google.com/group/J-Programming > > > Tæknikunnátta höndlar hið flókna, sköpunargáfa er meistari einfaldleikans > > góður kennari getur stigið á tær án þess að glansinn fari af skónum > /|_ .-----------------------------------. > ,' .\ / | Með léttri lund verður | > ,--' _,' | Dagurinn í dag | > / / | Enn betri en gærdagurinn | > ( -. | `-----------------------------------' > | ) | (\_ _/) > (`-. '--.) (='.'=) ♖♘♗♕♔♙ > `. )----' (")_(") ☃☠ > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
