Gordon
Quite a lot of complex issues in this. I'll defer my response for a few
months. I'm putting together a paper on these sorts of things.
- tony
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-link@www.anu.edu.au [mailto:owner-link@www.anu.edu.au]On
> Behalf Of Gordon Keith
> Sent: Friday, 3 August 2001 3:52 PM
> To: Anthony Healy; Link List
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Case law as open source
>
>
> On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:41, Anthony Healy wrote:
> > > People wonder how programmers could make a living in an environment
> > > where most software was open source and anyone could write their
> > > own code. Lawyers don't seem to be starving even though case law is
> > > open source and anyone is entitled to defend themselves.
> >
> > The difference is that case law is the input to the work that lawyers
> > do for a particular client, whereas source code is the output of the
> > work that programmers do.
> >
> > If you have the case law, you still need the lawyer to do the work
> > for you. But if you have the source code, you no longer need to pay a
> > programmer to do the work for you, or to pay the particular
> > programmer who did the original work.
>
> I think you're correct in the short term, but I can't help thinking
> that you may not be in the medium to long term.
>
> We are already seeing that people are hard pressed to find a good
> reason for upgrading to the latest version of popular software and
> software companies are trying all sorts of things to get people to
> upgrade.
>
> I suspect that with all the free software around the future for
> companies to sell mass market software is limited. Why should people
> fork out for MS Office when Star Office is more than enough for 99% of
> users?
>
> The future for companies to customise software for particular
> applications and/or particular clients, however, shows no such limits.
>
> So, much like lawyers can make a living from servicing particular
> client needs, so too will programmers in the future. I don't think
> they'll do it selling programs, but selling programming services.
>
> Even now many software companies are making a good proportion of there
> incoming by selling annual support, rather than software.
>
> Someone has already said that more than 70% of software development is
> currently for in-house projects. I don't think that effort will shrink
> if a large proportion of the current shrink wrap market is replaced by
> open source, in fact I would expect to grow because a) money otherwise
> spend on shrink wrap software becomes available, and b) it becomes
> possible to integrate your companies applications directly into the
> desktop software (you have the source).
>
> Regards
> Gordon
>
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