Add in that a lot of software is <br>written in India, EU, etc. It's <br>simply a more competitive world<br>today. You could sell anything in<br>1982, when the PC hit town, but<br>today there is lots of competition,<br>
and as you say, the OS is free now.<br><br>But as someone else mentioned, <br>custom packages - circuit design,<br>things like Mathematica, and CAD<br>and CAM programs in general - still<br>cost. And they are typically not garage<br>
shop products - they require lots<br>of programming and topic knowledge.<br>Even games are big business today.<br>No one much care about "pong" and<br>Packman today.<br><br>The answer here might well be no, <br>
unless you have a really big idea, and<br>just want to do the idea development<br>in a garage. For anything more mundane<br>there are a lot of people scrambling for<br>the same business. And they'll do it <br>more cheaply if they are in India...<br>
<br> -- Bob<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Michael Mol <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mikemol@gmail.com">mikemol@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Is it there even a future a small company (I'm talking under ten<br>
employees) to make money writing mass-market software to be<br>
distributed any more? Open Source has gotten incredibly good, and<br>
keeps taking more of the mass market away from closed-source small<br>
applications. Serverside, just about any major piece of closed source<br>
software has an open-source analogue of reasonable quality, and that<br>
quality is picking up as we go toward the future.<br>
<br>
And then there's the Cloud; The only plausible approach to DRM these<br>
days is to control *everything* serverside, and only display a UI to<br>
the client. For the sake of efficiency and control, the Cloud is<br>
absorbing more and more applications, and the largest web companies<br>
(Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) have bought companies that developed web<br>
applications. Microsoft acquired Hotmail years ago. Google acquired<br>
Writely and a number of other companies' products. I can't cite an<br>
example off the top of my head for Yahoo, but I expect there's one<br>
there.<br>
<br>
It seems the only way one can get paid to write software these days is<br>
derived from subscription model. Either as part of a company that<br>
sells branding and support (Red Hat), or as part of a company that<br>
derives income from subscription services. (Don't talk to me about ad<br>
revenue; That's the biggest hoax since Duke Nukem Forever was<br>
announced. Only the most popular websites earn real coin off of it,<br>
which leaves your niche applications and any competitor without a good<br>
marketing team out in the cold.)<br>
<br>
So what's going to happen to our programmers when the only way to get<br>
paid for it looks like it's going to be a subscription-based service?<br>
What's going to happen to the people who actually *contribute* to<br>
desktop-placed open-source?<br>
<br>
Sure, Cloud-based software is nice, but there are serious privacy<br>
issues that nobody has really addressed, and I know plenty of people<br>
who don't have the network connection to let them use modern web apps<br>
with regularity and reliability. What happens to those people?<br>
<br>
And what happens when someone's parole conditions require them to not<br>
use the Internet?<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
:wq<br>
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