Re: Open Source vs. Commercial Software

FoulDragon@aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 10/24/2005 9:42:09 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
derek@gnue.org writes:


When someone starts with Open/Free Software vs Commercial Software, it
isn't even worth exchanging dialog with them. It is clear from that



It's hard to find a clear way to divide the market, that everyone can agree
on. We know that Windows XP is obviously licenced differently than FreeBSD,
but there are so many nuances in between that a line's hard to draw. Remember
the old Qt licence fiasco? In addition, a lot of words are overloaded or not
obvious in meaning to the general public. Free, for example, could mean
"beer-free", "speech-free", or "free-with-a-limit". IMO, the only truly speech-free
licence is public-domain, everything else is free-with-a-catch.

I think we can agree, the vast majority of commercially sold packages, where
you're buying a licence, are not libre. A few are-- like many web apps, which
must be customized to the site

In general, people paying for libre software are buying "accessories" to the
software, like CDs, support contracts, and books. Some pay for custom
development, or donate like a charity to the developers.

So a reasonable way to divide the market is to compare commercially-sold
software (typically not libre, licences sold) versus free-and-open-source software
(libre, licences given away)


You make it too difficult.  The market segment is very easy to divide
because we actually have words at our disposable to do so.

It should have read

Non-Proprietary vs Proprietary Software

As the issue at hand is not the cost of the software.  The problem is
that when you equate Free/Open Software (non-proprietary) as being
"non-commercial" (as is implied when saying Free/Open vs Commercial) it
propagates the notion that non-proprietary software does not have an
economic value.  Which is false. 

--
Derek Neighbors





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