On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 12:55 AM, Orlando Andico <[email protected]> wrote:
> The reason why closed-source companies charge for EVERY copy of their > software, is because they need to money to: > > 1) develop NEW versions of the software with MORE features > oracle maybe yes but ms office. > 2) pay their shareholders the first sale could have paid them enough. > I don't think anybody will deny that everybody needs a decent > livelihood. Guess what... closed-source employees like myself also > need a decent livelihood. And the shareholders in these companies > deserve a decent return on their investment. > > If you put your money in a company, or the bank, would you be happy if > it paid no interest, no return? Hmmmm. of course not. its the reason why you have decided to in the first place. if your purpose is to donate it then its a different story. > > Nobody will deny that non-Free software costs money. But companies > will only charge what the market is willing to pay. Since the market > is willing to pay Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft, Infor, and God knows > who else, then there is nothing immoral about charging those prices. > And the market is willing to pay because they get something for it. lets influence the market to pay less and less then. > That "something" may not resonate with Joebert or RMS but it does mean > something to these companies. > > Let's not forget that all those great innovations that RMS slavishly > re-implemented (his beloved gcc, grep, etc ad infinitum) all came out > of Bell Labs, which (yes it was a Free software culture) was > bankrolled by the largest, most monopolistic company in history, AT&T. if oracle is willing to bankroll an a rewrite or show code perhaps in free terms i dont have a problem with that. > And let's see... the Unix desktop (GNOME and KDE) have been sapping > developer resources for over 10 years.. that's almost a generation... > and still get bitch-slapped by MacOS X. There really are some things > that a "many eyeballs" Free approach isn't good at addressing. im satisfied with GNOME. i can't afford a mac anyway. so bitch-slapped will not apply to me and to many others i think. > You don't get something for nothing. i get my ubuntu desktop for nothing. > And in my opinion, the price of continued innovation in software, is > having to pay for (at least some) of it. > someday innovation will come without a price. > > Anyway back off my soapbox. And back to my evil Closed-Source job that > pays the bills. And incidentally helps a lot of people in this > country, by enabling companies and government agencies to do their > jobs better. it is expected to help a lot of people in the country. taxes are spent paying the license isn't it. if its free then you get an award just like RMS did. ;) _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
