Phil Mattison said: > business model. It seems the FSF will be to the software business what
> P2P file sharing is to the music industry. If the RIAA can't put a stop
> to MP3 file sharing (and I don't think they can), the only way for
> musicians to make money will be live performances. Not necessarily a bad
> thing, but they won't be able to get as rich as they would otherwise. In
> the software industry this means no more royalties from 50M copies of
> VisiCalc, for example. Programmers get paid for writing custom software,
> service and support. Maybe that's enough. You could argue that without
> the pecuniary motive the really good software won't get written or
> supported, but the existence of Linux seems to prove otherwise. On the
> other hand, Linux still doesn't have quite the polish of Windows. But
> then, that might be nothing more than the difference between Whole-Wheat
> and White.
I think this is a good analogy. Very few companies actually make their
bread and butter off software licensing. Even large companies like
Oracle, Peoplesoft, SAP could sustain themselves w/o "licensing fees".
Licensing is a major PROFIT center. That is license to print money, but
most of them could float just fine w/o those fees. Support and consulting
while not as lucrative as licensing, is profitable.
Especially when the code is open and more people are contributing.
Lowering the "research and development" cost, by spreading it across the
masses.
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