An Open Source VB?

[Ben Matterson]

Todd B wrote:
>
> Mark, Like you I have been reading quite a bit about open source
> but to this day one question still nags at me. How the heck does
> anyone make money so they can pay the bills and buy food?

It depends on what one is open sourcing. For example, video card drivers
would be great for open sourcing, because the companies involved sell
the video cards, not the drivers.

Ben

[Craig Clearman]

Hi Ben,

>It depends on what one is open sourcing. For example, video card drivers
>would be great for open sourcing, because the companies involved sell
>the video cards, not the drivers.

But could you publish enough information about the interfaces and
optimization techniques for your cards without giving too much
information to your competitors?

Ciao, Craig

[Todd B]

Hi,

> Almost forgot whats important to you. How do you get paid? Developing
features
> and support and trainning and scaling the program and updating to VB7 and
> rewritting to accomodate new/specific business practices and .... As
your
> own man. Based on a powerful paradigm <-there goes that ugly word again>
> the 'open source' pppp...never mind. Get it?


I still do not get it - but from this point of view. VB has become a very
popular language. Much of that is due to the third party developers who
supported the language with COM objects, .dll's, ActiveX controls and
programming addins. So, let's take those same vendors, set VB up as a
open source market and put those same vendors in that market where they all
now have to release open source else no one buys their products.

All of them (or at least most of them) would go out of business. I will
use ActiveX for this example. ActiveX can range from very small in size to
medium or even large in size. Either way, many of them perform functions
that require some very elaborate, detailed and impressive code to do what
they do. But once you open the source up so the whole world can see it,
there is no longer a competitive market for other ActiveX products to be
released in that same category. Everyone can now see how it is done and can
either make their own control or just copy the code and add it directly to
their applications code.

So what happens to all of those other companies? One wins and the others
loose. Currently programmers can find at least 3 or 4 types of ActiveX in
the market that work in the same area. Let's use Email ActiveX controls.
Right now there is good competition and vendors have to work their butts off
to be the best and convince programmers that their product is the email
ActiveX control they should buy. You open all of this to open source, and
there will not be competition because once a company releases a 'new'
product, others, as I already mentioned, will just use that source (modified
to their needs) or write their own now that they see how it is done.

Sure, there are variations in each of the companies that create these
controls now... some of more features, others have better features, some
work and some don't. What is to stop that company that has an email control
from not adding the same functionality that their competitor has?

I guess I am missing something. I just do not see how open source promotes
good, solid competition nor do I see how it drives companies to create
better and more capable products in order to remain competitive in the
market. To me open source, kills at least 80% of the competitive drive
companies now have to create more and more good products. Out of the
example I used, maybe two of those companies would still make enough to pay
the bills. But an open source market would not allow for any more companies
to survive.

Keep in mind this is in regard to small/medium sized companies. Large
companies like IBM and Microsoft that make monster apps will survive because
the user base cannot operate and maintain systems that big without support.
But maintaining smaller apps, ActiveX and other programs of the small nature
do not require that type of 'support' base for everyone that buys it.

I know this because I am part of Agendum Software. We have become known
for the capability, power and ease of use of our products. 95% of our
customers never need to contact us for support help on how to use our
products - yes I am braggin a bit! ;-) - with that being the case, where
would we make any money which is needed to pay the bills?? Do we start
making shoddy products just to insure people and companies have to pay us
for support?? I don't think so.

You also mentioned that we could make money upgrading to VB7. Our customers
all know that we do not charge for updates or upgrades of our products. We
will also not charge for the support of those products (with exception to
commercial contracts). We feel that if a customer purchases one of our
products, then they also are entitled to and have purchased our full
technical and Q&A support with that product - and they should NOT have to
pay us for something that we feel they should get when they paid money for
our product. When a customer puts their faith in us and our products, then
we need to make sure that faith is not misguided. They get free support as
long as they are the registered user of our products. Do we screw up
sometimes? You bet. But we do not charge because we screwed up, we learn
from it and make sure that any future customers get the best support (and
product) we can deliver.

I just do not see open source as a good solution for the entire software
industry. Some areas, perhaps. But those areas I consider nitch areas.

Your thoughts?
--

Sincerely,

Todd B

Confusion say * What goes around, Keeps going!*


"spiker" <noneed2@email.com> wrote in message
news:396bc4d5$1@news.devx.com...
>
> Todd,
>
> Mark's idea is bad only in one respect.....VB.... the language is
proprietary
> to *Microsoft*....duh! He seemed to imply he was going to duplicate the
> language and not pay for it or get MS to agree. Try that with JAVA and
see
> what McNeally does to your sorry *ss when you change a spec. I can't
believe
> Mark got quoted by DEVX. The truth is I wrote to the GNU site's FAQs guy
> many moons ago and asked if you could have an 'open source community'
around
> VB and from a licensing point of view he saw no problem. That is if I
posted
> a fully developed app's source code (including activex controls etc...) on
> a website and defined it on the GNU License that would be okay given MS'
> license agreement with VB developers. Imagine tying in XML. Now thats a
> powerful thought. Imagine open source code for law enforcement officers
> laptops, vacations booking,...... The list goes on. Just again in order
> to keep your bill down to 5 bucks I'll quit now.
>
> Almost forgot whats important to you. How do you get paid? Developing
features
> and support and trainning and scaling the program and updating to VB7 and
> rewritting to accomodate new/specific business practices and .... As
your
> own man. Based on a powerful paradigm <-there goes that ugly word again>
> the 'open source' pppp...never mind. Get it?
>
> Just Kiddin'
> Spiker ;- )>
> -Lets burn the DEVX Java editor in effigy for not responding powerfully to
> valid Java criticism.- Hey eddy-tor whose your boss man? Your letting
> us down here. We may need to ask for a replacement player.
>
> "Todd B" <ToddB@NoSpam.AgendumSoftware.com> wrote:
> >Mark, Like you I have been reading quite a bit about open source but to
> >this day one question still nags at me. How the heck does anyone make
> >money so they can pay the bills and buy food?
> >
> >Take Linux. There are a number of companies that now 'sell' it or at
least
> >they package it and sell the box which happens to include Linux. They
> seem
> >to also have some type of support contract they offer to companies and
> >people that want to use Linux. Ok that is fine.. but you can only have
> so
> >many of those type companies.
> >
> >Thus, what happens to every other programmer? Let's say every
programmer
> >moves to Linux development whether it be C, C++ or whatever. Everything
> is
> >open source. Company A create programming tools, company B creates
> >programming tools and so on in every category. Obviously since it is
open
> >source, they release it free and open to the world. What I want to
know
> >is who pays for the time and other expenses for the 2 or 3 years of
> >development? After releasing the 'product' for free, where do they
garner
> >revenue to stay in business?
> >
> >There can only be so many 'companies' that offer 'support' for open
source
> >and that make enough money from that to survive.
> >
> >Your thread just made me think of this issue again so I figured I would
> put
> >the question out there. Can anyone reasonably explain how open source
can
> >be beneficial in the type of economic world we have today? If we lived
> in
> >a world where money did not exist and everyone had what they needed
without
> >the need for income, then sure. But for the life of me, I cannot see at
> all
> >why there is such a big push to go open source.
> >
> >--
> >
> >Sincerely,
> >
> >Todd B
> >
> >Confusion say * What goes around, Keeps going!*
> >
> >
> >"Mark Alexander Bertenshaw" <mark.bertenshaw@virgin.net> wrote in message
> >news:394e1c2b$1@news.devx.com...
> >>
> >> G'day -
> >>
> >> I have a background in VB, but have recently been looking at Java. This
> >has
> >> led me to read about the concept of Open Source, copyleft et al. I
hadn't
> >> realised how much work had been done by some of these guys - it's quite
> >incredible.
> >> Unfortunately, it is being done by such a minority group. And a lot of
> >these
> >> people seem to have an unfortunate tendency to look down on certain
> >groups.
> >> For instance, in the otherwise enlightening "How To Become A Hacker"
> >(http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html),
> >> Eric S. Raymond has this to say:
> >>
> >> ----------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> >
>

[Todd B]

Ben, Now that is an area that can work in open source. I agree with you.

--

Sincerely,

Todd B

Confusion say * What goes around, Keeps going!*


"Ben Matterson" <boam@got.net> wrote in message
news:396DF6C7.E75BFD78@got.net...
>
>
> Todd B wrote:
> >
> > Mark, Like you I have been reading quite a bit about open source
> > but to this day one question still nags at me. How the heck does
> > anyone make money so they can pay the bills and buy food?
>
> It depends on what one is open sourcing. For example, video card drivers
> would be great for open sourcing, because the companies involved sell
> the video cards, not the drivers.
>
> Ben

[James Curran]

Eric Raymond was a speech (which I haven't heard) which supposed to
explain all this. Basically, it assumes that everyone will be consultants
writing custom (non-OSS) apps for individual companies or a consulting Linux
SysAdmin (apparently, once we all switch over to this perfectly-stable,
all-around-great OS, there will be a great need for top-quality SysAdmins --
makes you wonder....)

--
Truth,
James Curran
http://www.NJTheater.com (Professional)
http://www.NovelTheory.com (Personal)
http://www.BrandsForLess.com (Day Job)


"Todd B" <ToddB@NoSpam.AgendumSoftware.com> wrote in message
news:396b012e$1@news.devx.com...
> Mark, Like you I have been reading quite a bit about open source but to
> this day one question still nags at me. How the heck does anyone make
> money so they can pay the bills and buy food?

[James Curran]

"spiker" <noneed2@email.com> wrote in message
news:396bc4d5$1@news.devx.com...
> Mark's idea is bad only in one respect.....VB.... the language is
proprietary
> to *Microsoft*....duh! He seemed to imply he was going to duplicate the
> language and not pay for it or get MS to agree. Try that with JAVA and
see
> what McNeally does to your sorry *ss when you change a spec.

The Basic language existed before Microsoft & VB, and MS's alterations
aren't significant and it would be hard for them to claim proprietary
ownership of them. Also, MS has *never* initiated a lawsuit over a
technical matter (they have countersuit when someone else sued them first;
and they have sued over trademark matters). And McNeally may rant & rage
(Really, is he good for anything else?) But unless you call your clone
"Java (TM)" or license Sun's source code, he wouldn't have much to stand on
either. So, I doubt he has matter to fear from copying the *language.*

Now, copying the IDE gets a bit trickier, as Lotus has legally proven
that the "Look 'n' Feel" of a program is copyrightable. Still, I don't
think Microsoft will be concerned enough to take legal action. The clone
will almost always be one version behind (They can't start working on the
version 7 clone until v7 has been released; if a VBv7 beta tester were to
work on the clone, that would clearly be a violation of his NDA, and would
easily get him kicked out of the beta at the very least)

--
Truth,
James Curran
http://www.NJTheater.com (Professional)
http://www.NovelTheory.com (Personal)
http://www.BrandsForLess.com (Day Job)