
jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu (Jon Lasser) wrote:
End of goverments = decline (but not end) of software markets?
It's already happening anyway. In a few years (if not today) Microsoft is going to be hard pressed to come up with excuses why someone should pay $90 for Doze-95 when they can get a Linux CDROM for less than $20 (or ftp it for free). With WINE and DOSEMU, that Linux system will run most of the same software too. Willows software recently released their own windoze emulator for Linux for practically nothing (there is a small fee for commercial use, free otherwise). Look at Netscape, giving away their browser for free and how Microsoft finally gave in and did the same because they couldn't sell theirs. Selling software is going to become practically impossible within a few years, and prosecuting piracy will become even more fruitless. Rather, more and more companies will give the software away for free, and sell their expertise. Sure, they will still package it nicely in a box to sell it to corporate types who are afraid of ftp, but what they're really selling is not the software but the tech support number. Anyone can get more software than they will ever use from the various ftp sites. Mr. Corporate Executive doesn't want to waste his time checking out the latest offerings on the net, but he will pay to have a reliable program delivered to him that can be installed easily, by a company that will be happy to answer his questions about it. Companies like Red Hat and Walnut Creek are doing brisk business selling cdroms full of software that you can get for free. You can search the net for interesting stuff for months on end, or you can get all the best stuff on one disk from them for twenty bucks. And look at Sun Microsystems - they're giving away all their software for free. But when someone wants a reliable network server, who are they going to call? Sun. Software doesn't sell, but expertise does, and giving away well-written software is an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise to a large audience. The concept of copyright is pretty much dead; the free market has invented new solutions.