[renegade]:
If FOSS becomes the dominant model, innovation will stop. Or be severely slowed.That's okay, Renegade, I appreciate your response because you've clearly thought this out. But on this point I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what more
FOSS will bring to our collective table. I don't believe all software should be free. It's just that if I'm going to migrate to Linux over time, it wastes my money to invest in commercial software that I won't be using in the future,
unless that same company ports it to Linux. Not all software on Linux machines is free or open source. And sure I could use WINE or VMWare to run Windows software. But the difference is, I don't
want to. The key to your development dilemma is Open Standards, which:
- Promote interoperability among products made by different vendors and software providers.
- Drive competition in the marketplace thereby increasing product innovation and quality while lowering prices.
- Provide customers with a greater choice of applications and providers.
- Level the playing field, giving no clear advantage to any player unless they happen to provide a superior product at a lower cost, regardless of their current marketshare.
Clearly no one would possibly want any of these things, right? If the first point is achieved, then the opportunities for you to make the rent money increase exponentionally. No one more than me wants programmers to go to the bank; because as an end user, I benefit directly from your hard work. You said it best: "
Free is great sometimes, but other times we need commercial software." I still say one of the most creative licensing combos is by Don Lessau (XYplorer dev) who sells a cheap Lifetime license, but then leaves a Donation link up on his site. I use it, too, because I know he doesn't make a killing off his software, and because he's on my side. Sure, the vast majority won't donate, and he's the victim of piracy like everyone else. But it's a unique 1-2 combo I haven't seen elsewhere.
But that's also where we have to work to change the mentality toward donationware, for instance. I've written to FileForum no less than a half dozen times asking them to add a 'Donationware' category to their site for devs. Still nothing, and you get a lot of 'reviewers' trashing good software because the dev asks for a donation — any donation. How many times has someone online written: "If only I had a dollar for every time my software was downloaded, I'd be rich." Unless it's highly popular software, not all downloaders will keep it or use it. But if it's something like uTorrent or CCleaner or what have you, you can bet most are using it.
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