Jean-Francois Dive wrote:
> The idea is that developping free sofware leads the author to it's own
> professional death: if the opensource movement works to it's extreme
> extend, what will happens to the company that sell whatever proprietary
> sofware ? It's faith is death or recycling. As most of the opensource
> developpers are professionals, this directly leads them to a no job
> future. The extended idea he raises is that developping an opensource
> software simply cut any value of the work we do.
Only a relatively few people employed at Microsoft (or any black-box closed
software producer) make money from closed source. So what?
Most of the money for "the mass of programmers" is in deployment, systems integration,
support and consulting on existing platforms and systems.
I've never made a penny from writing and selling a Windows app. I have
made most of my income from designing and deploying in-house systems,
usually based on existing open source platforms (my preference).
> My point of view is that the business model of a simple software
> engineering company will have to move towards service integration and
> consultancy, but this is true that in a way this movement may lead a major
> change in the industry.
Once again, closed or open, most income is made in the way you mention.
There is an argument to made against the practice of shonky, crappy, incomplete
and buggy systems delivered on Windows platforms (and how that involves heaps of
extra consulting fees and endless employment), but that would be off-topic
for this list.
My own preference is to deliver completely tested and reliable systems based
on a solid platform that require little future maintenance, often using Linux.
-rickw
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_____________________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services Pty Limited
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity
has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
-- Richard Dawkins
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