Offlate a disturbing thought has started bothering me. What would happen after 20 years from now on ? Is open source going to destroy software businesses? Well right at the start let me clarify that I like open source a lot and as much as possible try to use open source software. But is this open source a "destructive technology "?
A few days back I read a Richard Stallman interview where he said people should not develop software for living !
Imagine thousands of families without a source of income all over India if this ever happens.So in a way I feel that what RMS says is utter crap. I'ts okay that he developed FSF and we use a lot of his code today but his view are skewed and he fails to understand what could be implications of Free software. If we make very software free then there won't be any software business and whatever would be left would be just to maintain code. If all the code is open sourced then what would be the motivation to develop a software ...if you cannot sell it?
Imagine a scenario in future when a lot of code is open source and more then 50 % people use open source model . Then a person x needs a specific program and he asks a particular company to develop this code. Having a firm belief in Open Source he asks the company to GPL the software they developed for him or atleast give him the source code. Like him a lot of people need this software and they demand the same from the company. So now a few individuals on this planet have this software and this code . What happens next is anybody's guess!
These people who have the code start selling it (piracy ) steps in. Not only does the comapny which developed the code is not able to sell it anymore ,somebody else is making money on their work !
think about it
and leave comments ..may be I m not able to see things in right perspective..correct me if I m wrong
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Friday, March 04, 2005
OS(open source)
We are planning to roll out an IITK specific gentoo based Linux/GNU distro.This distro would enable lesser mortals like us to use gentoo without wasting too much time on tweaking. I ve already tried gentoo once but it could not boot :) . Though I dislike the very idea of tweaking everything myself and like things that are polished. I guess this is where Open Source needs to catch up ...polished products. There are a very few polished and complete products around. Those who are there are very famous like firefox,DC++,fedora etc. What do I mean by polished here ?
A polished product is a complete product with documentation , hardware compatibility and most importantly user friendliness. I guess a lot of products in open source domain lack this.They don't worry much on UI part which in my view is the most important as not everybody is a rocket scientist to figure out things and tweak and optimize. This is the same with gentoo. It's a great product but it lacks UI. Had they concentrated on making the installation process a bit user friendly ,it would have been numero uno in linux distro market. In my view this is the sole reason why companies like M$ and apple have gained so much market, they concentrate a lot on UI.
Time has come for OS to break this shackles of Non User friendly interfaces OR crappy UIs and realize that if OS has to gain more popularity then UI is a must.
A polished product is a complete product with documentation , hardware compatibility and most importantly user friendliness. I guess a lot of products in open source domain lack this.They don't worry much on UI part which in my view is the most important as not everybody is a rocket scientist to figure out things and tweak and optimize. This is the same with gentoo. It's a great product but it lacks UI. Had they concentrated on making the installation process a bit user friendly ,it would have been numero uno in linux distro market. In my view this is the sole reason why companies like M$ and apple have gained so much market, they concentrate a lot on UI.
Time has come for OS to break this shackles of Non User friendly interfaces OR crappy UIs and realize that if OS has to gain more popularity then UI is a must.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Yippee!
Good things are happening to me
First) I won two competitions at Techkriti (technical festival at IITK) first one was hacking competition ...conducted by Sachin Deodher a huge geek! when he talked we were like "WOW!!!"
he actually runs a comp with 1 ghz overclocking ..can you believe this !!
well the prize money was 5000 and three guys share it ... my teammates were Varun from pune and anirban from jalpaigudi(must admit he was a big pain ) ...though had no idea about the last round as it involved a lot about assembely but did chipped in with my bit in the first two rounds...
second)Was really unexpected ..but I must admit that I dreamt a lot about it :) Dreams sometimes come true ... But surely it was the most unexpected...The open software contest ...a sexy 15k prize money and a geek recognition ..what more I could have asked for ...and whats more we did not even have a presentation ready or a paper to present to judges
But we did it with style ..even though my english was jerky and cheap ..I managed it
we here means nanda and me ...but I m not gonna share any prize money with him :P
hmm ..so much for techkriti
yesterday I got this summer internship at Ankeleshwar in gujrat ..must admit not a very good one ..but neither a bad one ....this one with 2000 bucks and TA and accomodation would see my summer through
and yeah I was working for a company and they gave me 500 bucks
so money is not scarce these days for me
whats more ..yeah a girl proposed to me :D
so I guess my lukha days are over ...but ...are they ?
Nah ...I am better as I am ..free like a ....street dog :P
is there somethign I m forgetting ?
well don't think so
adios
First) I won two competitions at Techkriti (technical festival at IITK) first one was hacking competition ...conducted by Sachin Deodher a huge geek! when he talked we were like "WOW!!!"
he actually runs a comp with 1 ghz overclocking ..can you believe this !!
well the prize money was 5000 and three guys share it ... my teammates were Varun from pune and anirban from jalpaigudi(must admit he was a big pain ) ...though had no idea about the last round as it involved a lot about assembely but did chipped in with my bit in the first two rounds...
second)Was really unexpected ..but I must admit that I dreamt a lot about it :) Dreams sometimes come true ... But surely it was the most unexpected...The open software contest ...a sexy 15k prize money and a geek recognition ..what more I could have asked for ...and whats more we did not even have a presentation ready or a paper to present to judges
But we did it with style ..even though my english was jerky and cheap ..I managed it
we here means nanda and me ...but I m not gonna share any prize money with him :P
hmm ..so much for techkriti
yesterday I got this summer internship at Ankeleshwar in gujrat ..must admit not a very good one ..but neither a bad one ....this one with 2000 bucks and TA and accomodation would see my summer through
and yeah I was working for a company and they gave me 500 bucks
so money is not scarce these days for me
whats more ..yeah a girl proposed to me :D
so I guess my lukha days are over ...but ...are they ?
Nah ...I am better as I am ..free like a ....street dog :P
is there somethign I m forgetting ?
well don't think so
adios
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