[GRLUG] Impact of subscription model on software development and use

[Michael Mol]

Is it there even a future a small company (I'm talking under ten
employees) to make money writing mass-market software to be
distributed any more?  Open Source has gotten incredibly good, and
keeps taking more of the mass market away from closed-source small
applications.  Serverside, just about any major piece of closed source
software has an open-source analogue of reasonable quality, and that
quality is picking up as we go toward the future.

And then there's the Cloud; The only plausible approach to DRM these
days is to control *everything* serverside, and only display a UI to
the client.  For the sake of efficiency and control, the Cloud is
absorbing more and more applications, and the largest web companies
(Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) have bought companies that developed web
applications.  Microsoft acquired Hotmail years ago.  Google acquired
Writely and a number of other companies' products.  I can't cite an
example off the top of my head for Yahoo, but I expect there's one
there.

It seems the only way one can get paid to write software these days is
derived from subscription model.  Either as part of a company that
sells branding and support (Red Hat), or as part of a company that
derives income from subscription services. (Don't talk to me about ad
revenue; That's the biggest hoax since Duke Nukem Forever was
announced.  Only the most popular websites earn real coin off of it,
which leaves your niche applications and any competitor without a good
marketing team out in the cold.)

So what's going to happen to our programmers when the only way to get
paid for it looks like it's going to be a subscription-based service?
What's going to happen to the people who actually *contribute* to
desktop-placed open-source?

Sure, Cloud-based software is nice, but there are serious privacy
issues that nobody has really addressed, and I know plenty of people
who don't have the network connection to let them use modern web apps
with regularity and reliability.  What happens to those people?

And what happens when someone's parole conditions require them to not
use the Internet?

-- 
:wq