Re: tlug: Re: Many Faces on Linux

["Andrew S. Howell" <andy@example.com>]

>>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Byrne <- 3Web <jq@example.com>> writes:

    Jonathan> On Fri, 25 Sep 1998, Andrew S. Howell wrote:
    >> After your and Jonathan's post, I realized that I have be
    >> living in a (UNIX) shell too long. The shareware movement seems
    >> to be mostly PC based, or rather most (all?) of what I use is
    >> not shareware.

    Jonathan> Oops, got distracted and sent that last one before I was
    Jonathan> done :-)

    Jonathan> If people could write open source shareware and make
    Jonathan> money on it while providing source to registered users
    Jonathan> (at least, and maybe to everyone), the ability to make
    Jonathan> money from writing Linux shareware could allow some
    Jonathan> talented authors to work at that full-time or
    Jonathan> semi-full-time and help expand the pool of developers
    Jonathan> working on Linux.

There seems to be a fundamental difference though, when money enters
the equations. With open source, the only "profit" the developers get
from it is 1) recognition 2) creative satisfaction. The motivation to
continue working stems from that. 

What happens when I come up with shareware and charge x for it? Will
other developers continue to work for free while I rake in the big
bucks :) 

If I can't get others to contribute, then it would limit the size of
products I could offer. I suppose that one could come up with a
virtual company, somehow distributing the profits to those that have
contributed to the development. Doing that equitably might be rather
difficult though.

Any idea how this works in the shareware community?

    Jonathan> As we have seen with Windows (a commercial success),
    Jonathan> OS/2 (generally a commercial failure), and MacOS
    Jonathan> (somewhere in between, I guess), one of the things that
    Jonathan> influences how much of the market you can capture is how
    Jonathan> many developers you can attract, and keep attracted to,
    Jonathan> your platform.

If the virtual software house could be implemented, it might offer a
way to keep developers attracted to some product.

    Jonathan> Gaining developers, especially gaining Windows 95
    Jonathan> developers who either come over to Linux or at least
    Jonathan> port their products, can help push Linux to larger
    Jonathan> market shares.  Ports from Windows 95 would be
    Jonathan> especially good, since the should be able to import the
    Jonathan> files of the Windows 95 versions, easing the transition
    Jonathan> for people who are migrating, or considering migrating,
    Jonathan> from 95 or NT Workstation to Linux.

Though linux is very good, the one thing that I wish the linux
community would do is not be so linux centric. That is, I would like
to be able to run some open source stuff on commercial UNIX
systems. As I write this, I can't think of a good example, but I know
in the past I have found stuff that is so full of "linuxisms", that it
is difficult to port. 

Andy

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