From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00, SYSADMIN autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 11232c,992bfa9d3803bf5b X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,ac39a12d5faf5b14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-04-20 05:20:25 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!deine.net!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!news-x2.support.nl!psinet-eu-nl!psiuk-p4!uknet!psiuk-p3!uknet!psiuk-n!news.pace.co.uk!nh.pace.co.uk!not-for-mail From: "Marin David Condic" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: Open Source: in conflict with the development process in the Ada community? Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 12:04:28 -0400 Organization: Posted on a server owned by Pace Micro Technology plc Message-ID: References: <3CB94312.5040802@snafu.de> <4519e058.0204150645.62003096@posting.google.com> <3CBCEB15.E104D1F5@adaworks.com> <35c5c360dfe83cb34ea9648445bd0e95.48257@mygate.mailgate.org> <5ee5b646.0204190620.1902ede@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: dhcp-200-133.miami.pace.co.uk X-Trace: nh.pace.co.uk 1019232270 12040 136.170.200.133 (19 Apr 2002 16:04:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@news.cam.pace.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 19 Apr 2002 16:04:30 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:22812 misc.misc:6722 Date: 2002-04-19T16:04:30+00:00 List-Id: My point was that all products go through a cycle and as GNAT (being a product) matures in its cycle, new things have to step in to take its place. That's just conventional business wisdom. To the extent that you sell services (educational, training, consulting, whatever) you've got a different kind of value added that is not exactly tied to the product. Even that goes through its own kind of "product cycle" wherein it has to change over time or it dries up. At one time there were lots of companies selling buggy whips. Presumably, there might have been a whole market for maintaining, repairing and educating users of buggy whips. But if those companies didn't move on to maintaining, repairing and educating users of - say - automobile tires, they're consigned to the dustbin of history. Product & service cycles are always going to require something new be developed. As for a business model that gives the product away to produce a market needing the services? I'm not against that, but I think it has yet to be demonstrated that it works for any and all kinds of software. Word processors being the current example, I've worked for a number of companies that have used a number of different word processors in a variety of settings and I don't recall ever once being asked to go find a small team of experts to contract with for some sort of ongoing support. Maybe we bought training courses - but that hardly required an open source model. There might even have been a need for a certain amount of "help desk" support, but again that didn't require an open source model. One company could sell you the software and another provide training and question-answering and so forth. Does that mean I'm against "Open Source" software? Certainly not. Am I against giving away the razors in order to later sell the blades? Not if it works. Can any and all software projects survive and prosper with an open source, "give the software away to sell the services" model? Maybe. But I don't think that has yet been demonstrated and I'll bet we could probably go find examples of business's that have failed using this model. Hence I wouldn't begrudge any businessman saying "I won't put my software out on the net under GPL (or similar) because I don't think I can make a profit doing so." MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com "Robert Dewar" wrote in message news:5ee5b646.0204190620.1902ede@posting.google.com... > > Well I don't remember if Marin was ever a customer or not, I think > not, but > in fact this misunderstands the support we provide. It goes far beyond > fixing > bugs, and providing custom features. What we provide most importantly > is consulting and help on the use of Ada, both at the language and > applications > level, and at the level of dealing with problems of interactions with > operating > systems, and other software components. > > So Microsoft may have a problem in its long term marketing, but that's > not > comparable at all, since by our standards Microsoft does not provide > support > (and that's not surprising because they don't charge for it -- having > top qualified engineers available for immediate assistance is not > inexpensive) > > Certainly part of our support services involves fixing bugs, but > that's a > declining part of the total support traffic, and that's fine with us. > At > the same time, our total customer base for support services is growing > steadily. > > Why? Not hard to see. We are in an industry where a days delay for one > engineer > costs something like $1000, *NOT* counting the collateral costs of > delays. It's > pretty easy for us to save a company money once you take this into > account. > > As to the question of whether other products can be marketed in this > manner. > I see no reason why not. For example, for a word processor, I am > certainly > NOT about to mess around and build from sources if I can buy a > prebuilt and > pretested executable in a convenient distribution. If in addition, the > product > comes with real support, I am definitely willing to pay more. > > I agree that a word processor probably requires less support, and in > particular > that it does not require top engineering experts to provide this > support, so > I would expect such support to be less expensive than GNAT. > > People just assume that using a license that is favorable to users > means that > it is imnpossible to make money. But most of this assumption comes > from gut > feeling, tuned by years of exposure to alternative models, rather than > hard > facts. > > My viewpoint is that you make money by providing customers with > something > they need. One of the needs is for licenses that are less restrictive > and > do not get in the way of people doing what they need to do. We are in > the > business of responding to this need. We guess that others could > succeed by > being attentive to their users in a similar manner. > > Think about the whole discussion of COTS products. What are the two > main > concerns about COTS: > > 1. Support being tied to a single company > 2. Long term availability of this support > 3. Ability to customize if needed > > The open source free software model responds effectively to all these > concerns. At the same time, people who are interested in the economies > of > scale that come from the use of COTS products are definitely NOT > interested > in using unsupported software. > > I think there is a perfect synergy between producer and consumer here, > and > I think it could be applied to many other software products > successfully.