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On Company000's acquisition of Company001On Company000's acquisition of Company001Posted Nov 4, 2003 20:20 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544)In reply to: On Novell's acquisition of SUSE by rknop Parent article: On Novell's acquisition of SUSE Ah, less of that negativity. Reading too many press releases can be bad for you health. Free Software will win. I am certain of this. Stuff is going to get worse before it gets better, SCO won't be the last attack on the community. But GPL'd software is always Free. GNU/Linux has gotten too big to be ignored. The mega-corps say "GPL is not business friendly", hoping they can convince us to give up on the goal of freedom. But reality is that of the Free unices, the mostly-GPL'd one is the one with the most business interest. Then they say "software can't be profitable *and* free". While ignoring that only 6% of M$ income is from software sales. Also ignoring that the software *using* community is currently answering to a microscopic software producing market. This is not a stable industry model. The infrastructure will have to change, but it will be Free Software that wins in the end.
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On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 5, 2003 10:35 UTC (Wed) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > While ignoring that only 6% of M$ income is from software sales.I've seen statements like this (with the percent value varying wildly, though). Is there a solid reference? Regards, Evgeny
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 5, 2003 19:18 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] short answer: No :)Despite seeing it just last week, I can't find/remember where I heard it. But even with this data removed, my point stands. Companies can give users freedom, and still pay wages. RedHat, CodeWeavers, g10code, MySQL AB, Ada Core Technologies, etc. have been doing it for years.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 6, 2003 10:13 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > Despite seeing it just last week, I can't find/remember where I heard it.> > But even with this data removed, my point stands. > > Companies can give users freedom, and still pay wages. RedHat, CodeWeavers, > g10code, MySQL AB, Ada Core Technologies, etc. have been doing it for years. Right, and I have no doubt that one can build a successive business based on the free software. However, saying that only 6% of MS's income comes from the software sales you in fact imply that the other 94% of its multi-billion assets are legal (in the sense of FLOSS spirit). It allows MS to cry loadly: "See, we get our money in the same way these dirty commy hypocrites want (and use) themselves! Why should you (business) bother considering using free software? Why should you (senators) consider using the antitrust laws against us?" I believe the 6% number related to the desktop OS sales only (and still I'd expect it to be higher). Other rumors say that desktop OS + Office sales amount to roughly half of the yearly MS income. If it were 6% or so indeed, MS would happily made its software free (as in beer), since the neglible 6% would be easily compensated by a jump in the installed base (and hence, support fees).
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 6, 2003 17:10 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] > 94% of its multi-billion assets are legalSource of income cannot justify holding power over computer users. > Why should you (business) bother considering using free software? Because without software freedom, you do not fully own your data. And with file format lock-in, you cannot choose the best tool for the job. > Why should you (senators) consider using the antitrust laws against us? Because monopoly status of the OS has been used to gain monopoly status in the Office software realm as well as other realms. > If it were 6% or so indeed, MS would happily made its software I don't know much about Windows anymore. There could also be business motives for putting a high price on the box. One thing to remember is that their install base couldn't get much higher no matter what they do. As mentioned, I can't put up a decent defence for this statistic, but I can still defend that software freedom does not have to destroy profits.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 6, 2003 21:21 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > I can still defend that software freedom does not have to destroy profits.Well, it does destroy profits - _unfair_ ones.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:04 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] > Well, it does destroy profits - _unfair_ ones.Ok, I'll concede this much :)
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