On Tuesday 10 March 2009 01:01, Aasif Shaikh wrote: > Hi All, > > I am new to GNU/Linux and Open Source world. I had seen lots of > open source stable projects on internet, which anybody can > download, modify and sell to anybody. > > Now the question arises; if a *PERSON A* develops a stable and good > project as an Open Source and upload it over the internet and the > *PERSON B* from some other country downloads and modify it with his > name as an author (basically he is stealing someone's code) and > sell it to some company to make money out of it. So how this > *PERSON A* is going to be benefited. > > Please excuse me if I am wrong in asking this question.
You are not. Closed source relies on creating shortages and charging money for the commodity in short supply. It also presumes that the creator is the only one with all the ideas and hoarding these ideas will enable a business. The flaw in this business model is that there is no shortage of inputs required for creating and distributing software (subject to providing the appropriate framework). Also the costs for detecting and implementing copyright protection far exceeds the recoverable costs and even worse penalises the legitimate user with stupid audit and licencing compliance norms. FOSS relies on making widely available ALL tools necessary for creating software. It also understands that debugging, maintaining and customising code is expensive. Further it presumes that most people have moments of creativity and hence harnessing that creativity will build a large pool of ideas. Thus the business model is to leverage everbody's idea and code in return for one's own contribution (miniscule in comparison to others' contributions), parallel the review and debugging process, and charge for distribution, customisation, maintainence and or ride other services made possible by using FOSS. Commercial Distributions RH, Canonical aka Ubuntu, Novell aka Suse, etc Customisation KG, JTD, RH, Maintanence KG, Rony Bill, JTD, RH, Canonical Services Google, Jabber, Yahoo The problem with closed source is that when their business rules broke down, most of them resorted to subterfuge by hijacking communications and storage protocols into which YOUR data is encapsulated for transmission and storage. And by cutting out competition through illegal (and some brown sugar) deals. One of the brown sugar deals is the "Free" antivirus that come with a pre installed M$ system. The hardware guy gets paid by the AV fella and M$ to bundle the AV and doze. M$ then charges you for the tools (word, VB, VC, etc) and the upgrade, and the AV guy for the upgrade. You might have noticed more holes in the business model than the original holes in the crappy software. M$ has been the worst offender and has been repeatedly convicted in court. Many have also resorted to plain piracy - so much for shouting about piracy - and have been convicted in court or have choosen to settle out of court. Having illegally obtained a business advantage (and consequently huge amount of money and market control), they proceeded to subvert governmental bodies engaged in the implementation of standards and laws. In at least two countries the M$ managers should have been thrown in jail for libel and unduly influencing a ballot. In India they got away by tendering an apology. -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
