Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 30th Sep 2009 16:09 UTC
A very simple question for you. How often have you resold software that you legally purchased? Often enough, right? Well, if it's up to Autodesk, the company behind AutoCAD, you will no longer be allowed to resell your software. Update: As it turns out, the matter has already been resolved: Autodesk lost. A win for all of us.
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Member since:
2005-07-07
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
Developers who are FOSS advocates usually have at least the same level of education and skill as developers who prefer proprietary licences.
As for incentives, being professional engineers they would probably do it for the same incentives as the engineers preferring proprietary licences, e.g. money.
Some of the most popular open source projects like OpenOffice are short on volunteer developers so it is incredibly naive to think that functional equivalents of industry specific software like AutoCAD will by produced by foss advocates.
While CAD is certainly a different problem domain than office software, it would be suprising if people with skills for one of these are more likely to prefer FOSS licences than ones with skills for the other.
Actually I would guess that there are more developers interested in working on engineering related software than "productivity" related, independent of which kind of licences they prefer to put code under.
People wanted an AutoCAD clone 10 years ago. The foss community hasn't provided one and there is no reason to believe that one will be produced in the next 10 years.
You seem to be mixing different concepts, i.e. licencing and development model.
It is most likely impossible to do something like AutoCAD based solely on volunteer community based work, but indepenent of which kind of licence the community would choose to use.
Another company would probably do it just like AutoDesk, assuming they would be in the same situation as AutoDesk had been back when they started or enough funding to compensate for AutoDesk's head start.