Jeff wrote:
Not just feedback. It's saying that access to specialized knowledge has increased the # of programmers => more code => less $/byte , particularly when the userbase is big. People will give code away for the same reasons they do unpaid internships - it (hopefully) helps their careers. The exception (in the article), "vertical software markets", have fewer users with greater needs. I think CAD software fits this model; there are very few open source/free CAD packages out there and most are simply demos. Autocad, Pro-E and the like are still spendy packages but if you're in the business you have to buy them. Of course even the CAD market has a sort of o.s. "community" - there are oodles of parts libraries and macros out there free for the downloading.
Funny you should mention CAD. I can tell you that in electronic design the CAD software is painful. Designers have to be pretty good script writers to patch around the holes in the methodologies and the bugs in the tools. The field is very ripe for open source where the designers could go in and fix those damn bugs. -- Allen Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.peak.org/~abrown/ There are two ways to design a chip: Right, or over (and over...) _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
