They provide you the basic operating system or software and expect you to buy the enhancement and tool that make the software or product better. Its like I give you an OS for free with the source code, either you make it work wonders yourself, coding your enhancements on it or buy it from us. Not all people in the word are Linus Torvald or Richard Stallman mind you!
Its more like I give you a vanilla ice-cream for free, you like it, eat it the way it is or buy the chocolate sauce from me. Similarly I give you the outer body of the car for free, now you feel at least I have got the body just what I need now is engine and other parts that make it work. One way it’s not bad. At the end the car that you get will cost you less because you are just investing on all other thing but the outer body.
The thought behind it is simple, suppose you need a software. You search the net and you find my software which fits your need. You download it from me, use it, when you are dependent on it, you want to make it better. I say either you make it better your self or buy this enhancements from me. In the end, yes you guessed it right, you end up buying the enhancements from me because you cant or might be don’t have the time to code it yourself and all the other open source enhancements available don’t merge with the application you have got for free.
Nothing is free on earth and neither is open source.
All these geeks who make the software and provide it as open source are:
Students (who make software for some project or fun)
People with a hobby, where writing software is their hobby.
Paid employee of some organization who sell their enhancements on top of their so call open source products.
Now consider all the software and enhancements were available for free would there be enhancements? Competition? Customer satisfaction? Leave alone Customer support?
It’s not these companies or the geeks who provide open source products, but more of it’s the people to be blamed that they don’t understand the concept of open source. Open source does not mean “Free software”.
Lastly let me end my discussion with this thought! If all the software were available over the web as free (open source) would there be so many companies paying engineers huge salaries for making software? Consider this scenario, I am working for a IT company which sells software for its clients, lets consider the client to be XYZ. I am a small time developer for the company. I know the functionality of the software and I am not happy the way the company I am working has designed the designated software. So me and my friends decide, let us make a software with similar functionality and put it for free download on the net and also provide its source code there so that any one who wants to add to the functionality may do so. At the end there is a software on the net which is much better than the one the company is making for its client.
Now consider the scenario where the company comes to know about this freely floating software on the net, tests its functionality and find it better than the one they are getting made. Its obvious, here-on the why the hell does XYZ spend millions of dollars on a software which is freely available. So XYZ close the account with the IT company, the company has no choice as most of its people have gone on bench. To reduce its losses the company fires most of its employees. Who suffers?
The world runs on survival and survival of the fittest. If all the geeks had nothing to eat (job) would they sit in front of the PC and code?
Bottom line is, open source is good. But the industry won’t survive on open source or will it? Not every thing can be made open source, there is always a limit. There will be no competition, no customer support if all is available for free.
Open-source is a business in-itself, it does not mean free software.
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From the BrAiNs of,
Ninad Dighe.
1 comment:
Very nice article Ninad...Enjoyed it....
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