Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 04 Sep 2000 23:47:26 +0200 | From | Elmer Joandi <> | Subject | Re: GPL violations: make it harder |
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Andre Hedrick wrote:
> > There is overproduction of generic-purpose software in world and > > of course lots of companies are going to bancrupt soon, but if you > > continue this way, GPL is going the same way... > > Do not follow the thought, sorry.
The Novell stuff. Sorry to say, but who needs it in real world ? 99% of consumers are happy with NT and are happy with samba. See the generated revenue per marketshare as divided between small-average-large bussinesses and you see, that there is very little place for cutting edge software for file sharing. People just solve software problems in hardware. I have constantly problems getting Pentium 100Mhz to work full-loaded and if I get, I replace it with Pentium 266.
For last two years there is more hardware and software power that people can make use of. Interfaces and protocols incompatibility and version instability is the only thing that keeps the money coming from generic-purpose software(operating systems), otherwise everybody just would use linux and samba on top of it, however bad and inefective it may sound from non-linux benchmarkers mouth. If fileserver becomes slow, they replace it and take old to home for kids to play.
There is more general conclusion from that: 1. times of revolutionary rapid changes in generic purpose(OS) software is over and there will be one or two (binary and open source) generic purpose software distributions in the world as fast as interoperability will be achieved.
2. It also means that besides MS, there will be no one who manages to charge money for generic-prupose software and if full interoprerability is achieved, neither do they.
3. A lots of programmers get fired and go back to roots - farming work for example :)
4. Innovation currently generates new values, but public can not make use of it in reasonable ways and therefore it will not be rewarded.
GPL(linux) may also go bancrupt in sense that if MS drops NT server price down to 70$ and copies all new ideas, linux will be for freaks and paranoid and MS can earn revenue from applications. However, there is another possible way: 100% interoperability is achieved and however ineffective the linux solution is, people will use that.
But the worst nightmare for linux would be if MS goes open source with its OS. Because then US foreign affairs department will enforce strict copyrigth laws and forging and stealing software will be made impossible and all new ideas would be patented and bought up. You see, if binary software is banned, that makes possible way more deep monopoly schemes. And then it would be either GPL or MS (patent-or-legal-rights-buy-up-office) who owns the software of the world.
elmer.
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