news.com.com — Plaintiff Daniel Wallace had sued the open source giants, contending that they had conspired with the Free Software Foundation and others to offer their wares at an "unbeatable" price (read: free), thereby squeezing competing alternatives from enterprising software writers like Wallace out of the market.
Nov 10, 2006 View in Crawl 4
zomboNov 11, 2006
One only needs to look at IBM's Eclipse project to see an example of how big business and free software can kill a market. In this case the IDE market. The man definitely had a case.
phirenNov 11, 2006
Thats nothing, I'll give you $100 to use my software.
escamilloNov 12, 2006
"It can be shown that open source software does not price commercial software out of the market."Didn't Borland have to abandon development of their Java dev tools because of Eclipse? That's what they claim, anyway.
mlw4428Nov 12, 2006
There's no legal base for his case...he'll loose (at least in the US). Open Source has been around for a long time and I'm sure this hasn't been the first time, some sore assh**e wants to sue because his software isn't churning in cash.
robotcitizenNov 12, 2006
Fine, let's outlaw all free products and services. The next time your buddy borrows your hedge trimmer, charge him rent. This is insane.But if this Wallace assh**e really insists on this, then let's humor him. The next version of Firefox should cost $0.01. Visa and Mastercard accepted.Or maybe Mozilla could reorganize itself into a non-profit charity.Sheer idiocy.
covertbadgerNov 12, 2006
Coerce? How did you drag that out of what I said? No-one is forced to use any software that the government might release. You want to justify higher taxes and more government waste by having it pay inflated rates to businesses to add needed features, who will outsource the work to India, rather than use the money to pay citizens to make the changes? And yes I do believe in a competitive market place - perhaps you would like to explain (with supporting evidence rather than rhetoric) how open-source reduces competition?I'm not sure if you're shilling for somebody or not, but you have very, very strange ideas about how tax dollars should be spent.
chaos386Nov 12, 2006
If it takes you thousands of dollars and years of development to do what one guy can do in his free time, maybe you just suck and no one would have bought your product anyway?
chaos386Nov 12, 2006
He didn't mean imperfect "it's not as good as the closed-source alternative", he meant imperfect as in "they aren't exactly the same." It's an economics term used to differentiate between markets in which you have competitors producing identical items (nails, washers, pipes of standard sizes, etc.) whose only difference is price, and markets in which you have competitors producing similar, but not identical items (mp3 players, cars, movies, vacation destinations, etc.), which are different in price, features, quality, compatibility, etc.
ronaldstNov 13, 2006
This thread proves it. Digg users all have accounts at /.
fyngyrzNov 15, 2006
@covertbadger: "You are assuming that open-source software is written only be amateurs, and that commercial software is written by experts."No. I'm not. I specifically said "not always", and then I even gave examples; the gimp is an amateur project, apache and linux are not. You should really read before you post.@covertbadger: "Most genuinely expert software engineers are likely to be attracted to open-source software as it lets them take off the shackles of commercial development"(laughs), perhaps you mean, "it lets them take off the shackles of being paid for their work." :) FOSS is rarely a source of decent income. Yes, you can avoid the "shackles" of a boss, but then again, you end up with the shackles of the GPL, of responsibility for intersecting another entity's patent, the costs of development... as a programmer since the 1970's, I can tell you that the "shackles" of commercial development can be diamond encrusted and gold plated. Rarely is this true for FOSS. They sometimes come with pats on the back, but not always. Especially in situations such as the gimp where the product isn't even close to the commercial varieties of the application space.@covertbadger: "Logic aside, there's the simple and observable fact that there is a huge amount of open-source software out there that hugely outclasses anything in the commercial space."Oh, please. Your "fact" is a straw man: There are perhaps a hundred projects like that (and I think I'm being generous), most of the major ones we know about. Linux isn't one; it is better than windows, but worse than OSX. Apache *is* one. The gimp isn't one. Photoshop, WinImages, PSP, Ron Scott's QFX... they all kick the gimp's butt from here to the moon. Blender -- up to par, but not better than the commercial stuff. OO -- still not up to par with Office. GnuCash -- still not caught up to Quicken. Firefox, yes, right up there and definitely a little past the best browser, which is OmniWeb by quite a margin. POV-Ray? No, not even close. Pick from 10 or 20 commercial tracers that wipe the floor with it. PostgreSQL and MySQL -- no, sorry, Oracle is still ahead. Though I'd rate those two as commercial quality, if that makes you feel better. GCC? Nice, and VERY flexible, but not as nice as MS's or Apple's systems. I could go on all night, but I'm sure you have a rebuttal waiting. Fire away. :)