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Technology Stocks : LINUX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mitch Blevins who wrote (676)	12/2/1998 11:45:00 AM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2615

Sendmail and a lot of other programs are effectively not really open source as they are supported by only one group. What I mean here is not one modifies the program except Allman. Many so called open source programs are really fixed programs that are distributed freely with available source code. Many carry the proviso that they are for "non commercial use" Whatever that means. A programmer co-op would work by code module distribution being paid as it is bought minus reasonable distribution costs. Support would be flow through to the programmer. It is actually an exciting idea. Central repositories could distribute advertise and market on the WEB which programmers haven't time to do. Much of the programmer's co-op function would be the distributing of applications of authors and already formed teams. The co-op would test with its beta test team and help the author debug and sell the app. The advantage is the power of the co-ops source and profile would sell the app where the author's present resources would not be sufficient. Co-op projects where many diverse people work on one item a-la Mozilla would have to be based on bugs fixed and line written on some mutually agreed upon schedule. Man has worked out compensation for every type and amount of labour since eve bit the apple so I think it could be done. I cannot see why there would be more griping about compensation than within a 4 wall type of office. All the co-op-project does is dispense with formal hiring and office space and other costs. Cost for co-op programs would be much less. Distribution amongst the members would add to word of mouth and lessen advertising needs. Shrink wrap costs and computer store markups would be less. MS makes about 10% after subtracting all development costs and distribution costs. A typical co-op program would sell for about 25 bucks where a MS program sold for 125. Perhaps 5 bucks would go to keeping the co-op running. A really big program like a Visual Language would sell for perhaps 75 where MS sold the same thing for 600. The author ends up making more than he would in any distribution contract and the program costs 75% times less. Everybody benefits. Co-ops are friendlier and patching and upgrading would be far more accessible. The need for source code is moot for the majority of program users. In the development stage a large group could share source code in the co-op project model. They get a free copy. The user does not care for the code 90% of the time. He wants a piece of code that works, that is all. And upgrade and patches for a reasonable period. Most programs benefit by not having 200 developers. That is no advantage. Many shareware code projects had one or perhaps a dozen developers all known to each other. They did pretty well. Witness Apache. I still say the average code writer out there cannot benefit by the free code-consultation model. Few get to consult and do it all. There are lots of people who can build useful code. EC<:-}