What is Digg?156 Comments
- sabster, on 10/12/2007, -3/+62Now think about this. Weird to think about how computers brought about software into such a booming industry now another modern computer invention, the internet, is taking away another industry. it seems the internet is taking over everything.. what will be big enough to take over it?
- gromitigo, on 10/12/2007, -22/+73I think the next big thing will be Real Life (tm). The internet will be brought down by people forming groups outside their living space. These groups will be knowns as 'pods'. Each 'pod' will be based on the 'caste' system of goverment, otherwise known as Pod Caste(s).
Eventually, the only thing left on the internet will be Seti@Home, and it will all be linux based. On 3 machines. - molecool, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17I agree with the one of the responses above - the software industry is designing itself out of a job market. I mean, imagine seeing an 'alternative' group of hospitals spring up where people work for 'the love of it' and everything is free. NO, I'm not talking about the few 'free clinics' you find here in the U.S. sponsored by wealthy individuals and where some of the homeless and poor can receive basic treatments for ailments. No, I'm am referring to top grade hospitals where you would go to have your brain tumor removed. What would that do to the salaries of doctors?
I have been working in the software industry for over a decade (off and on in the last 5 years) and have enjoyed getting my hands on 'free' software in the past. Now I realize that it was never free - I paid very heavily for it by not being able to secure sufficient employment and by having my salary slashed. How come a group of such intelligent people can come up with such a stupid business model? How can anyone make a living in an industry where too many people seem convinced that their road to salvation is to work for nada? You would NEVER imagine getting books for free - even the majority of articles in newspapers are written for profit. Doctors and lawyers don't work for free - how come so many of us bought into this? I love writing software but I really miss the days when someone was willing to cut me a check for it and I didn't consntantly have to worry about losing my job or how to make rent. - brhad56, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Commercial software isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
- burnt1ce85, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18lol. it looks like most programmers are going to drive themselves out of a job. oh wait.... im one of them! ahhh
- naich, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1110 years is possibly a bit optimistic. Also, I think there will remain a market for tradtional commercial sofware in niche areas such as professional audio.
Oh, and the bit that says '"The GPL is sometimes considered viral in that it grows out to the entire software package", requiring the release of all code affected by it, he said.' is hopelessly wrong. If you distribute software, you only have to release the source for code based on, or linked to GPL code. You can bundle proprietary software with GPL software without releasing the code for the proprietary stuff and if you are not distributing software you don't have to release anything. - EdgeOfEpsilon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10If software will all be free and we'll be paying for support, isn't there financial incentive to make software as labyrinthine and obtuse as possible?
"If the Quit button shut down the application instead of shooting off a nasty E-mail to their boss, we wouldn't get so many support calls! Why would we change it?" - akinder, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Well that's wonderful, I guess all us commercial software developers will be out of jobs :(
- Nonsuch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11There are still OSS people spouting this pie-in-the-sky nonsense? Maybe Mr. Stein should start his own desktop Linux company and see how many people are willing to pony up the "support" to keep his company in business. The "give away the software, sell the support" model is a utopian fantasy; it doesn't work and it never will. Commercial software being relegated to a "niche"? Laughable—that's the exact fate of free software, which appeals only to the small minority who a) can't afford (or can't steal) the commercial product, and b) are willing to put up with inferior capability and poorer user interfaces, all to either to save a few bucks or stick it to the Man.
- mapster, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13Whoever makes a comment such as this one is surely on drugs. Open-source will certainly grow, but there are lots of software types which do not fit onto the open-source model well. Things such as complex billing systems, CRM/ERP, OSS and many others simply are too complex and require too much value outside of technology to be brought forth to the mainstream using an open-source model.
These are the types of comments which really make me think that open-source "evangelists" are just a bunch of arrogant pricks. - Nicklogan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11looks like somebody is smoking something really good.
- berniej, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10But in 10 years, I'll be too old to use those free software!
- phpirate, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I kindof doubt that software will be COMPLETELY free. I love open source and all, but unless we're talking about linux or firefox, a lot of the developers have no motivation to support their projects. I think what will happen is that we'll see more software having a "free" version and a "paid" version.
I can't see programmers losing their jobs though. If software developing declines, there is always going to be room in hardware developing, as technology is becoming more and more important (soon our ovens, alarm clocks, showers, etc are going to be hooked up to the internet),. From what I know the amount of people taking computer science in college is in decline, and technology is growing more and more. - EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8What an utter fantasy. Wake me up when there a SINGLE piece of consumer, mass-market OSS that is a market leader. To the best of my knowledge the closest is Firefox with a ~10% market share and that's not much more than a rounding error. Yes, there are many great OSS apps out there, I use dozens of them on a regular basis. In niche markets like server software OSS is having a huge impact, but it's going to take a radical shift for free software to expand beyond its core geek market.
Even if OSS takes over core segments of the market, there will still be a thriving market for commercial software. I really can't see that shift happening though. I look at OSS companies and I see a few companies actually making a living, but not a lot of unholy success stories. Why would customers give up their current, successful business models to embrace largely untested methods? Not going to happen. - mockworld, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"All of your software will be free. It means that, over time, you aren't going to be paying for software anymore but will instead pay for assistance with it", Stein said.
Either way we pay, what's the difference? - machx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6As much as I like open source apps and work on one myself I can't see paid software going away.
in fact I tend to think of this as an efficient ecosystem when proprietary software starts slacking (ie Microsoft/IE/Windows) open source gets it's act together and produces something that rivals the proprietary software and vice versa (Mac OS X) proprietary software can tend to give open source a kick in the @$$ sometimes and show how much open source is slacking.
I don't think any major form of software is going away anytime soon. Just relax people. - ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Great, got my degree in Computer Science just so I can get a job on a help desk. Dunno about you, but I would rather be paid to write a bit of software be paid to answer questions about it.
- aywwts4, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7"You would NEVER imagine getting books for free - even the majority of articles in newspapers are written for profit."
And yet somehow I get them for free all the time.
Its a little thing called a library, one of the greatest public works of our time. - JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"Yeah, it might even take, oh, say, 10 years!"
I think it'll take a lot longer, if ever. The reason is simple, lack of motivation. What drives Open Source developers? In my opinion, primarily two things; 1) fun, they just get a kick out of creating software; particularly stuff that they might use themselves, and 2) stickin' it to "the man" (usually MS), which if you think about it, probably also falls under the heading of "fun" .
A lot of business class software; A) requires specific in-depth business experience and knowledge (read boring) in order to develop and B) isn't marketed by a big well known company that geeks love to hate.
In other words, lots of business software just isn't "fun" enough to attract Open Source attention. - apoch, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Yeah, sure.
Richard Stallman has been trying to convince everyone of this for years, and yet somehow, magically, I still get a paycheck every month in exchange for writing shrinkwrap software.
Open source is all well and good, but it has an extremely long way to go if it's ever going to replace paid software. - cybernetic798, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6This is so stupid. I support the OSS model where it yields a better product but I absolutely detest Richard Stallman and GNU's philosophies. It is so stupid to have free software just to have free software or so "your neighbor can borrow a copy from you if he wants to". I mean come on don't these morons want to make money and live a normal life?
Make software free and you will be poorer. Simple fact of life. Let's not be stupid here - no one wants to bank on 'support' to make money - I want to get paid for developing software, since that is the hard part, and the part I enjoy. Anything else is mere childish fallacies.
Why are the GNU people so interested in not making money off of their talent?!?! Ridiculous.
Oh well, I guarantee you this won't hold true. - EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4While certainly people customize Windows, significant alterations from machine to machine are rare. I can sit down at a Windows computer anywhere and be confident things will work the way I expect. Having to spend a few seconds looking for a "My Computer" icon does not remotely compare to the fragmentation of standards that exist on Linux. The only thing even valid of being mentioned is the single/double click option that Microsoft didn't have the cajones to standardize one way or the other. Multiply that times 100 and you have Linux.
Once in awhile I play around with a new distro of Linux. Every time there is a signficant learning curve. Even simple things like changing screen resolution or network settings are handled completely differently. You only have to look at the gazillion distro specific troubleshooting guides out there to know that the problems go far deeper. Ask yourself this: Could you write a "Linux for Dummies" book without ever even mentioning differences between distros? - ollywompus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Security reasons as well. Would a responsible business really want to give all their employees and the rest of the world full source code access to their mission critical software? Security by obscurity may not be much but it's better than nothing."
This I can't agree with. Plenty of companies run 'mission critical' apps using Open Source software. Apache, Linux Servers, BSD Servers, etc, etc, the list goes on. The Pentagon has Linux servers up and running; Google's web servers are linux boxes, and they get more hits than anyone per day I'd imagine; just because something is open, doesn't mean it can't be secure. My point about the software my company makes is that we can't legally release our source code, because that source code provides access to proprietary data from the USPS... so unless they make that data non-proprietary (and since that would entail a massive invasion of privacy, I hope they don't), we are not going to release our software open source.
-olly - xerox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5heh, not gunna happen :P
- Jonty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5In hospitals, you need equipment. All you need for programming is an old computer running Linux and an internet connection. Oh, and time. But *shock* people get paid for OSS programming. It's true. You can make money out of it.
- jinexile, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"Games. People still buy games even though there are thousands of computer games available for nothing. They won't stop anytime soon. People like mindless entertainment. The people who buy games like putting a disk in a console and having it work. Installing a new version of the C librarys on an old linux distribution to get some software to work is not their idea of fun. There is no pressing reasons for games to be open source."
Certainly that would explain why Quake 1/2 are open source, and games like Cube are being developed. Yes they are nowhere near on par with Unreal 2007 but a thing many people have forgotten is that Gameplay can make up for poor graphics, while Graphics can't really make up for poor Gameplay. I still play my snes because some of the games on there are WAY better than the ones on the current generation consoles. Hell the best game on the Xbox 360 is a 2d asteroids clone that you download off live.
"Wordprocessors almost entirely replaced typewriters twenty years ago. People have still not worked out that they are spending money unnecessarily by buying the latest version of microsoft office. Many people would still be happy with office 97 except that other people keep sending them files made with office 2003 which they can't open."
Ummm OpenOffice.org has very few problems opening and saving Windows Office 97/200X fomats, in a couple instances it actually opened and saved a file both versions of Office (97 and 2003) I had wouldn't. Right now the UI of OOo stinks but the functionality is there for about 90% of the users. In 10 years it will definitly surpass MSO.
"Standardisation. Being able to sit down at nearly any desktop computer and operate it is easy. With linux on the desktop I may need to single click or double click to launch a file depending on if it's gnome/KDe/whatever. Just switching from one program to another is different between window managers. That confuses the hell out of non-geeks."
Ummm Initiatives like OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox exist to standardize the way things are done. OOo uses a format called OpenDocument which could be used to standardize the office file document across the board had companies like Microsoft not refused to play ball. Firefox is the first browser since Netscape to force change in Internet Explorer, and unlike netscape, they are focing standardization of the web, by adhering to the W3C recommendations as closely as possible (sure Opera helped, but let's be serious, IE wasn't threatened by it.)
"Management. Managers in companys and government seem to have a long and consistant history of retarded decisions about information technology, no comprehension of the blindingly obvious and no foresight whatsoever. How companys have standardised on internet explorer and outlook when anyone who didn't just fall out of tree can see that the only sensible thing to do is to ban the use of internet explorer and outlook because of their long and continued history of security holes?"
This is changing, you read more and more about how governments and companies, especially in Europe and South America are weening themselves off of their microsoft addictions and turning to OSS such as OpenOffice.Org, Linux and Firefox. Many managers are coming to realise that their $100,000+ yearly budgets for microsoft licensing isn't so much a lower TCO as Microsoft told them.
Linux, imo, isn't ready for desktop usage yet, but It's getting there and I have no doubts they will be able to achieve this in 10 years.
OpenOffice.org is almost completely ready for corporate usage, there are a few power users that need some extra features to make it completely usable and then all it needs is an asthetic makeover and people will be switching en mass.
Firefox has already proven itself as success story for OSS, it's taken at least 10% of Microsoft's monopoly away without resorting to adding propertairy features, but by implimenting technologies that Microsoft was too lazy to keep up on. It also proves that you don't need to be proprietary to be secure. Sure holes are found but on average they are patched up 10 times faster than Microsoft's holes. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Where's the proof? Open Source software market share is a joke. Open Source advocates forget that people have to still have to earn a living. Look at all of the people that USED to work on open source software and took better paying jobs elsewhere.
- vintechsys, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Great! Exactly what we need free software with no support.
- skuzmak, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6who is going to write software if they are not getting paid to do so???? Sure, there are alot of tech-geeks out there who contribute to open-source initiatives on their (plentiful) free time, but no one can live on a model of giving your work away. America is built on SELLING people stuff (that they probably don't need), not giving it away. Perhaps the large software houses should be investing in creating a new daily star trek television series, that would surely torpedo the open-source effort.
- jgbphilly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Contrary to popular believe there exists markets beyond the OS, browsing the web, and managing your media content. These niche markets have a ton of large, highly specialized complex applications that no-one in their right mind would build on the GPL. These markets aren't going away and neither is the money they are willing to shell out to solve their problems.
- Darth_tater, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4i dont know abot all you, but i cant wait ten years...warez for now!
- sishgupta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4A large part of any successful business is adaptation. Instead of taking the end of commercial software in the fashion that you have, you should be embracing change.
Google, Firefox and Opera have allready made this change, their software is free and they have found a way of making profit.
What you should be saying is "Well that's wonderful, I guess all us commercial software developers will have to find paid jobs developing free software :)"
If you dont change your mentality, you actually will be out of the job, and you will have trouble finding a new one untill you change. The same can be said for companys today, they will need to change.
10 years IS optimistic though, but if certain events happen, it is a realizable goal. - toad3k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It is more like, they won't be able to charge anymore for the basics like they have been. The os will be free, the office suite will be free, the browser will be free, so every software house will have to step it up, and make something that is that much further beyond the norm in order to make it marketable. And that is where the money will be.
- diafel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Sometimes money is a better motivator than the kudos of anonymous internet posters.
- brandonhines, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3And Yahoo! before them? Google is tops now, but someone easily come from left field and trounce them.
- EdShroomhead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+342.
- egghead152, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Never stop downloading
- Apreche, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This is already the case. I haven't downloaded warez in 5 years. I'm all free software. The only legal software I pay for is video games.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Yeah, Bill Gates is soley responsible for everything you don't like
Yawn - Izzie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'd like to know how the "stop downloading warez" is in any way related to the article.
when a digger write a title for his submission he should not forget those who only read the headlines of the RSS feed. Although it works as a matter of getting people attention and can help the article make it to the frontpage, it is misleading, lowering quality of information, discredit an otherwise good article and make digg look bad. - raindog469, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"We can't release our code for security reasons" is usually a euphemism for "We have a bunch of hardcoded passwords and other privileged customer data in our source code." I've seen it, almost anyone who's done consulting for clients who do any of their own coding has seen it. It's a bad practice, but one that's almost universal.
But not all software is going to be free software. Yes, mass-market software is largely going to be free software eventually, but companies who pay people like me to alter or customize existing free software (or to write something from the ground up using some free software components) are usually not going to distribute their software at all. Even if they did. the kind of changes they usually ask for are not going to be accepted back into the main project, because they're willing to pay to have their particular business logic put into it, but not put into it in a way that's generic enough to benefit the other users of the project.
The article even says as much: "Commercial, closed-source software will not go away "because there's so many small niches that people will be able to exploit or be able to make commercial solutions off of," D'Amours said." - ThinkFr33ly, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Funny how this guy cites nothing but vague assertions as support for his thesis.
- dWhisper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2While I think it'd be great if this kind of wishful thinking ended up being true, I have a feeling that we'll look back in about ten years and laugh over the idea. Open-source is growing in leaps and bounds, but the idea has to crack through business America first... and it's all part of a circle that keeps each other around. While this isn't on the level of flying cars or the like... I do see this on the level as "Cell phones replacing all land lines" and "self driving vehicles"
Someday, probably. Ten years? Not unless the fundamental ideals behind software development change. - throwaway18, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think open source software on the desktop is inevitable for economic reasons but it will take longer than ten years.
Games. People still buy games even though there are thousands of computer games available for nothing. They won't stop anytime soon. People like mindless entertainment. The people who buy games like putting a disk in a console and having it work. Installing a new version of the C librarys on an old linux distribution to get some software to work is not their idea of fun. There is no pressing reasons for games to be open source.
Wordprocessors almost entirely replaced typewriters twenty years ago. People have still not worked out that they are spending money unnecessarily by buying the latest version of microsoft office. Many people would still be happy with office 97 except that other people keep sending them files made with office 2003 which they can't open.
Compatibility. I still use some software made for windows 3. I was irritated when windows 98 onward would not run my copy of microsoft word 1.1 I think it's a windows 2 program, it does different fonts, bold, underline, justified text, that is all most people use in word 2003.
Standardisation. Being able to sit down at nearly any desktop computer and operate it is easy. With linux on the desktop I may need to single click or double click to launch a file depending on if it's gnome/KDe/whatever. Just switching from one program to another is different between window managers. That confuses the hell out of non-geeks.
Management. Managers in companys and government seem to have a long and consistant history of retarded decisions about information technology, no comprehension of the blindingly obvious and no foresight whatsoever. How companys have standardised on internet explorer and outlook when anyone who didn't just fall out of tree can see that the only sensible thing to do is to ban the use of internet explorer and outlook because of their long and continued history of security holes? - cypherz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Programmers will still be around. Consultants etc will still have to modify software for custom uses. For example, business software, like ERP's, CRM, and MRP's have to be modded all the time because the business that uses the software is changing all the time. So even if these types of applications go completely Open Source, business programmers (4GL types too) will always have jobs. (I hope!).]
- Rice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Fancy meeting sHARD here. Heh.
- enzomedici, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4The world is flat.
The world will be overpopulated by the year 2000.
The year 2000 is the end of the wolrd.
The Kuwaiti Oil fires will black out the planet and create a global freeze.
Global warming will destroy the world.
THe US can't invade Afghanistan because no one including the USSR did in a hundreds of years.
The bird flu will kill us all.
All software will be free.
There's no end to the idiotic predictions. - TheEditor1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"you aren't going to be paying for software anymore but will instead pay for assistance with it"
Unfortunately this means you'll pay to talk to someone in India that has no idea what the hell they are talking about and only reads the on screen script. God help us. - vhold, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I remember reading stuff like this 10 years ago.
I think one thing that nobody has pointed out here is that most likely many open source developers are commercial developers in order to.. you know. .buy food and shelter. It's a fairly logical assumption since software development is probably their most marketable skill.
If all the shrinkwrap software jobs went away, how would those open source developers be able to support themselves? Through.. various.. foundations.. that uhh.. rely on the charity of people getting stuff for free. That'd definitely be no replacement. - somerandomnerd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Before Bill Gates entered the business, software was free, and came free with computers so that you could actually use the hardware.
Today the hardware is the cheap stuff you buy so that you can use the software. That's been the case since PCs stopped being "IBM compatible" and became "Windows."
Soley responsible for everything I don't like? No.
Personally partly responsible for the closed-source model of the software industry? God yes. Only an MS fanboy fool with no understanding of the history of the industry would disagree with that. -
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