Essentially, a zero sum gave is one in which there is a fixed amount of money, so any gain must be at the other players' expense and there are no "win-win" strategies. Open software development is not like that. The big players are large corporations that support it becaause doing so increases their downstream profitability.
As an example, whenever I got a program from, e.g., the CBT tape, and enhanced it, I didn't keep the enhancement as the private version of my installation, but sent it back to the author. In those cases where the author chose to include it in his version, I had less of a support burden, e.g., refitting my changes into newer versions. There is also the issue of support. When a company has staff familiar with the open source code, they are in a better position to sell support services. They win, the open source community wins and their customers win. If IBM invests billions in open source software, I have no issue with them earning it back selling services; in fact, I am glad of it. Whom does that harm? "I won't bail; the hole is in your end of the boat." -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Bob Bridges [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2020 11:55 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Everyone wants to retire mainframes" Not sure what you mean. I ~think~ I agree (unless I misunderstood you) - but software development still costs time and effort, and no matter who the developer is he has to eat. If he chooses to give away some of his work, that's fine and I accept gratefully; but it means he's earning enough elsewhere that he can afford to give away part of his time. So even in this case, "free" means "paid for by someone else". But yeah, there are some people who don't insist on getting it back one way or another, at least part of the time. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* Nothing is as bad as it seems; nothing is as good as it seems. -a farmer's saying */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Seymour J Metz Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2020 07:27 Software development is not a zero sum game. ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Bob Bridges [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2020 12:53 AM /* Most people thought [in 2000] that Web content should somehow be “free,” a hopelessly naïve ideology known today as “dot-communism.”...Dot-communism has been discarded along with its political counterpart, as users find that the adjective “free” means, as it always does, “paid for by someone else,” who insists on getting it back one way or another. -David S Platt, "Introducing Microsoft .NET, Third Edition", 2003 */ -----Original Message----- From: Seymour J Metz Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 20:16 I wish. GMU is using proprietary e-mail software and no longer allows access via POP3 or IMAP4. ________________________________________ From: Farley, Peter x23353 [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 5:53 PM Add to that the open-source mindset that software SHOULD BY RIGHT be "free" and you have a tough market to break into (again) from a for-profit company perspective. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
