Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Mon 19th Nov 2001 19:44 UTC
Today, OSNews features an interview with Zac Woodall, software design Engineer at Office Data and Developer Services at Microsoft Corporation. Zac, who is also a frequent OSNews reader, talks about the new Office, .NET, WindowsXP, NTFS and how it compares to BFS filesystem, the GPL & open source movement and much more.
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There is an attitude in this interview that software with GPL or similar licenses can't sustain a business, but in some cases it's the exact opposite. For example, take the case of Sleepycat Software. They release their source code with a GPL-like license, so anyone can use it if they accept those licensing terms. If someone wants to use Sleepycat's software in a proprietary product, they can negotiate a traditional licensing agreement. According to the CEO of Sleepycat, they've been profitable since the beginning and they wouldn't have succeeded with a different license, such as a BSD-derived licenses. Other companies like TrollTech and Borland are using similar strategies.
Here's a link to the recent interview with Sleepcat's CEO:
http://www.winterspeak.com/columns/102901.html
Another fallacy that one often sees in interviews with people from Microsoft is the idea that the only way to support software development is to sell software licenses. The fact is there are many ways for programmers to write software and get paid for it. In fact, quite a lot of software development is in-house stuff that directly supports the business and is never seen outside of the company.