RE: Development models // was Re: [Fsfe-uk] NCC Filetab for Linux

[Tom Weiss]

> Then their businesses will become non-viable, in the long term.
> 
[Tom Weiss says] 

Which is why managers in these organisations need to start taking steps
in the right direction.

> (in this case, GNU/Linux for i386 I think), but at worst it hinders
the
> creation and adoption of free software competitors.  I guess free
software
[Tom Weiss says] 

Generally, software products have only been able to gain significant
market share early in the product development lifecycle. As such, we
have a wide range of de-facto standards where products are market
leaders by a massive share. Obvious examples are the Windows desktop,
MS-Office, Oracle, and Apache.

It is my belief that many of these products will continue to be market
leaders, but that over time - as free software gains ground - they will
themselves become FSF/OSI license. IBM is very successfully turning
itself from a product company into a services company using FSF/OSI
software and even Microsoft is working to increase its revenues from
Consulting.

What I am really saying, is that I don't see most of the established
software being superseded by FSF/OSI software, but rather I see it being
released under an FSF/OSI license. As such, we should be doing all we
can to encourage businesses to move towards this kind of model. The key
to change is showing that companies can make money without charging for
software licenses. Once that has been established, the move from
cost-free software to FSF/OSI software is relatively small.

Michael and the NCC are helping move in the right direction, and to that
extent, I support them!

> 
> However, what started this thread was a complaint about advertisement
of
> proprietary software on a Free Software Foundation Europe mailing
list.  I
> think I have yet to see anyone disagree that this is unacceptable.
> 
[Tom Weiss says] 

This is always a tricky topic of conversation:

When Michael posts, it is an announcement, which never goes down well on
any internet lists (except specific announcement lists).

If I had made the post, saying "did you know that FileTab is now
available for Linux, isn't this another great sign of Linux going
mainstream" then it wouldn't be an announcement and no one would
complain.

I'd suggest that such posts are tolerated as long as they don't increase
to the level that the list is effectively a collection of spam.