Are Bad Economic Times Good for Free Software? 357
Dog's_Breakfast writes "In a declining economy, software licenses become a luxury. Linux and the BSDs offer free alternatives. As the USA toys with the possibility of defaulting on its national debt (and thus risking economic collapse), the author wonders if this might not, at last, lead to 'The Year of the Linux Desktop.'"
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the most broken windows thinking I've seen in a while.
I would argue though that it can be bad for the US economy, as software is a pretty big export.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
getting money to move from the average consumer is what's needed to drive an economy.
And you know what would do that? Burn their houses down. Anyone objects is basically a traitor to our glorious economy.
Ubuntu Duke Nukem Edition (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah the year of the linux desktop...been hearing that for a while.
Free software is mainly useful when you are implementing large quatities of things (e.g. server farms or point of sale terminals or generic desktops for interchangable worker bees. Also it's fantastic for sharing things to other people whoo can't be bothered to buy, say Matlab, to run your stupid script. that's why it gets so much play in acadamia.
but everyone else values their time and does not have the skill to deal with all the flexibility and variety Linux has. Google, apple and microsoft spend a lot making it easy to use and assuring compatibility (well not google yet). Linux by it's nature is untamed. it's a lynx not a kitten. Nothing wrong with being a lynx, but they are never going to be housebroken.
shooting to be a desktop environment for the masses is trying to be the wrong thing.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Moving money around as a way to grow the economy is overrated. The best way to grow is to actually produce something useful.
Default (Score:5, Insightful)
Money doesn't just dissapear (Score:5, Insightful)
People not spending money on commercial software doesn't mean that money just up and dissapears from the economy. Those people use that money for daily life necessities like food, utilities and transorrtation so the money goes back into the system but is taken throuhg a different industry.
Re:It would be for sane actors (Score:3, Insightful)
You implicitly assume the cost of switching is zero. It's very much not in any business of moderate or greater size, even if you assume the time of your employees doesn't cost you anything (which it does). It's not even low.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Free Software effect on the economy isn't that straight forward. What you loose in money flow you gain in your business ability to grow, and expand.
What free software did do, is make it hard for Software Companies to product new Software. Not all software business models work on the RMS Approved way of making money with Free Software. If your product is easy to use yet powerful, consulting services is out of the question, If your product is small in size, charging for shipping and material doesn't work as well. Some software business will work best if they focus on building the software and someone pays money for the right to use it. But the problem with free software alternatives is that these companies will need come up with a huge advantage over the alternative for it to succeed.
But as I said before that is too simplistic of a view... Because such software companies can alter their program to be one of those newfangled "Cloud" programs where people will just pay for the rights to use it, with using existing free software they can do this much more quickly.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. The only ones who directly benefit from a higher "velocity of money" are the tax-collectors, as taxes are imposed whenever money changes hands regardless of whether the exchange is productive. Everyone else benefits most from saving their money until they can make a productive trade, not from compulsively spending it as quickly as possible.
Forget The Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh-huh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely.
When the economy collapses, the first thing everyone will do is run out to become a computer expert so they can install and run linux. Corporations will replace their entire IT staff with people who know linux, and the average person on the street will suddenly realize that what they really need to do to cope with a failed economy is LEARN A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM!
Or, you know, people might just keep using what they're using while they hope things get better. Because that will leave them time to work enough jobs to buy food.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue, that as opposed to going into a bank account, money saved by most consumers is going into debt payoff. I know in my family (and several of my friends/kids' school families) this is the case. Skimped expenses are being used to build some infrastructure (home repairs, improvements, a garden, etc.) and the rest is being sent in to creditors.
I am very rusty on my econ 101, but IIRC (likely not) debt paydown is not considered savings (though has a similar result on the overall balance sheet).
Linux on the desktop? Never happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux, and open source in general, will never be that popular, simply because of cognitive load. It's software designed by engineers, with no clear understanding of style or ergonomics.
To use a car example, it's like a car with high torque and excellent gas mileage, but ugly to look at and the instruments are labelled differently and in the back seat. I don't mean that the instruments are *different*, I mean that they are conceived and implemented in an inconvenient manner.
Many companies hire artists and usability experts to look at the final product and make tweaks and recommendations. Some even take the trouble to engage focus groups of customers to find out what features are confusing, what aspects are uncomfortable, what looks ugly. They take this information and change their product for the better.
For the most part, the success of Apple products is for this reason: the iPod was not the first MP3 player on the market, but it's usability and aesthetic appeal and robustness made it highly popular.
Open source, on the other hand, is usually done by a lead engineer putting in most of the effort. The results usually have the following pattern:
1) Documentation: Writing documentation is boring. Put up a wiki and let the users fill in the details.
2) Aesthetic looks: This is not important. Give the user a panel to change the environment to suit their tastes.
3) Compatibility: Not important. Our package has "close file" (alt-file-close), but we've assigned the function to a different key.
4) Simplicity: More features is better! Try viewing the man page for "ls" some time. Or gcc. Or just about anything.
5) Descriptives: Don't choose descriptive names for anything. Instead of "Internet Explorer", "Paint Shop Pro" and "Media Player", use terms like "Gimp, Firefox, and VLC".
This last is one reason why old folks have a tough time using the new technology. They have to learn a completely new language: Every random word that they *thought* they knew ("gimp", "apache") means something different in the new system.
Gimme a break.
The software engineers have done a good job making robust, strong, functional packages.
Where are the open source tech writers? The ones who take that part of the problem and work alongside the engineers to ensure quality documentation? Where are the open source ergonomic experts, the usability analysts, the aesthetic artists? Who ever does usability studies, or consistency between apps?
Until the engineers get a clue, linux and related open source projects will never be more than a closet of hobbyist projects.
Making good software is more than robust coding.
Re:Default (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Open source cannibalizes ... (Score:4, Insightful)
And it's not like companies like GOOG do generate any (direct and indirect) economic activity.
Do you remember what it was like trying to search for anything before Google? Everything else was useless by comparison. Let us not take for granted how easy Google made it to locate useful and relevant information quickly. Sure, they are now essentially an advertising company, but their positive effect on the productivity of hundreds of millions of people has been huge.
(Said the guy surfing Slashdot).
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd argue that people do not save money because there is no point in saving something that is constantly being debased and inflated and devalued.
Definition of money is store of value, unit of account and medium of exchange. They removed one important aspect of it: store of value with fiat that is backed by nothing, thus people do not save.
I know I don't save fiat, I spend it immediately and to store value I buy metals and mining stocks, which from my POV counts as savings (for metals) and investment (for stocks).
People do have savings when money is not being destroyed by the government. Savings are what makes credit possible.
Credit is not supposed to come out of thin air and printing presses. Eventually somebody must produce something and have the value of that production stored and not spent, which then makes this value transferable and available as credit for for investment.
So from my POV, having a product that is of low cost or even, as in case with free/Free software can be had without cost of any license is a good thing, as it allows building up more savings, which can be used for investment, which is the only legitimate way to improve the economy.