Open-source enthusiasts and businesses are coexisting, says Adam Jollans, Linux strategy manager for IBM Software. Many companies simply want to figure out the best way to get the job done — they will gladly mix and match applications. Read the article at NewsFactor.
Linux Users Willing To Pay the Price
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
as long as I can get a good application that installs as good as a windows program and is as good as a windows program and I can get it in a box I will pay for it.
I have never realy been into the shareware scean and that is why I need a box.
What do you need a box for?
Having worked in the retail software market for many years, I can honestly say that all a box really offers you is a compact, mobile way to show off the skills of the company art designers and the owners of the printing press. It adds nothing to the software.
There is a lot of crap software sold in boxes. I think there are more discriminating and accurate ways to determine quality other than BOX == GOOD.
when I say box I mean a physical media. IK was to be sent a cd. it can be is a case or a sleave…a box just makes it look profecional.
is that all of the best utility/desktop enhancement, and server programs are available for free, whereas on the other platforms Mac, Windows, one has to pay for things like skinning, undeletion, partition resizing, mail/web/app serving.
I think that in the long run, provided the integration between all of these components becomes smoother and faster, free Unix is well positioned to gain significant share among savvy business and home users. It’s only a matter of time before a big vendor breaks free of Microsoft and starts making their own OS-branded boxes. Not only is it cheaper, it also allows them to customize things to their hearts’ content for their hardware and users’ needs.
I wonder, though, if this ever does happen if Linus will have to institute a sort of certification program to keep things from fragmenting too much.
“One advantage of Unix…
…is that all of the best utility/desktop enhancement, and server programs are available for free, whereas on the other platforms Mac, Windows, one has to pay for things like skinning, undeletion, partition resizing, mail/web/app serving.”
The reason developers target Windows and MacOS is because these companies leave room for third parties to exist with little fear of becoming irrelevant in the short term. Eventually all the things you list will become standard fare in these OSes but in the mean time third parties have free reign to create and develop in a know, consitent, popular system. Not to mention that free utilities aren’t available only to UNIX. Many useful tools can, and have been ported to Windows NT/2000/XP and MacOSX. Most remain free as well and on top of all this, some come with GUIs to control the basic functions, something lacking from their UNIX counterparts.
“free Unix is well positioned to gain significant share among savvy business and home users. It’s only a matter of time before a big vendor breaks free of Microsoft and starts making their own OS-branded boxes.”
Good lord, please do not go there. Does no one remember the UNIX wars of the 70s and 80s? This will make matters far worse because there are far more hardware manufacturers than before and entering the market is a lot easier as the parts to build systems is reletively cheap. I know many penguinistas will claim that linux makes it impossible to build a proprietary system, but I claim that this doesn’t matter. All it takes is a handful of them to make it extremely difficult to keep up with the differences between their versions of Linux. Geeks might not mind figuring out how to get things working together but many normal people do mind and most of these mind a great deal. Have the masses of geeks learned nothing from Apple and their approach to system design? It’s not all about pretty graphics and cases, it’s about building a system that makes sense and works <v>FOR THE LARGER COMPUTING WORLD.
“…but in the mean time third parties have free reign to create and develop in a know, consitent, popular system.”
Tell that to the 3rd party Mac specific companies that are slowly being shut out of the market. Case in point, Watson. This app was unashamedly ripped off in what became Sherlock 3.
Give ’em free reign then steal their ideas and integrate it…nice one Apple! They’re starting to act alot like another company I can think of….
Your perfectly right. OS vendors should not add things to their OS.
-An OS shouldn’t bundle a browser, we should buy Opera or OmniWeb or use Mozilla.
-An OS shouldn’t bundle a defragmenter, we should buy Norton System Works or Drive 10.
-An OS shouldn’t bundle a text editor, there are plenty of shareware/freeware ones on the internet. (Although how we get on the internet w/o first buying a third party browser is beyond me.)
-An OS shouldn’t come with and FTP client. We should buy some third party app like Cute FTP, BulletProof FTP, Transmit, or use a freeware app from the internet.
-An OS shouldn’t have multimedia application bundled. We should hunt for things like freeamp, winamp, audion, etc. (On the internet with our non-bundled browser.)
So who wants to buy this OS? Or maybe we could get on the internet telepathically (sans browser) and mentally download the source and compile our free (as in beer and speech) linux distro that doesn’t have any of the above. That way we can repeat the process for each app or until we mentally compile a browser.
Its been proven that if you put a box in front of a consumer vs. just software loaded on their PC more are willing to pay for it. Its a tangible object. People are fickle (and stupid). They perceive they are getting something of better value for their money if it is tangible and of a decent size. The more expensive the product, the bigger the box.
See I think this would be good. All too often I see all these idiots using Linux, and I think “WTF”? Who are these people? Linux is only for geeks, or at the very least power users. These people will never truly understand how the OS works, or be self-sufficent in troubleshooting their problems. So if we implement Vince’s plan, only the truly “smart” people will continue to use Linux. We can weed out all those non-dedicated free loaders. I might even start my own distribution. But you’ll have to find the URL somewhere else, because I would never post it on a mainstream site like OSNews.
Typical elitist crap. How about not interested in searching for software that isn’t at the store, where most of the population buys their software?
PS: I look forward to you joining my Linux distribution. You have to decipher the hidden message encoded in this post to get a hint on how to join. Good luck.
I bought a copy of Crossover Office 2.0 last night and if Macromedia turned around and said that they’re going to sell Studio MX for Linux, I would the first in line to by a copy, infact, I would pay even more than the Windows counterpart.
I think it is about time people realised that linux software companies failed because they never addressed the real market demand. The majority of Linux users now DON’T care about games, they want commercial productivity applications, development tools, Graphical applications and so forth.
Heck, I was talking to a Mac fan boy and showed him Redhat 9.0, he had a quick and look and stated, “if I could get Adobe Photoshop, Indesign, Macromedia Studio MX, I would buy a PC and use Linux”. See, there IS a market there. Mac users don’t like Windows, not the PC. If they could get a decent operating system on a PC then they would use one. Linux IS the solution many of these people are asking for. It is about time the people in charge realised this, and did something about it.
As for porting, goto http://www.mainsoft.com and have a look at the win32 –> *NIX porting environment. Having fiddled with it, it is a breeze.
Linux users don’t mind paying for software, they want value for money.
As for the amount one can make, since the majority of Linux users work in the technical area, the rate of piracy will be lower as many of the users realise the full cost involved with developing applications.
Good lord, please do not go there. Does no one remember the UNIX wars of the 70s and 80s? This will make matters far worse because there are far more hardware manufacturers than before and entering the market is a lot easier as the parts to build systems is reletively cheap. I know many penguinistas will claim that linux makes it impossible to build a proprietary system, but I claim that this doesn’t matter. All it takes is a handful of them to make it extremely difficult to keep up with the differences between their versions of Linux. Geeks might not mind figuring out how to get things working together but many normal people do mind and most of these mind a great deal. Have the masses of geeks learned nothing from Apple and their approach to system design? It’s not all about pretty graphics and cases, it’s about building a system that makes sense and works <v>FOR THE LARGER COMPUTING WORLD.
I do remember what they were like. What is happening now in the Linux world is what I like to call the “grand split”, one one side we have the UnitedLinux camp with is pro-KDE, on the other we have the Redhat camp which is pro-GNOME. Both desktop environments are being “harmonised” (to use the term used by the European Union), and eventually what we’ll see are two desktops, developed in two different languages (C and C++ respectively) however, to the user, with a unified HIG and desktop, they won’t really notice the difference except for different bundled applications.
As for the hardware side, vendors have already lined up and bundling. Redhat being the most popular for workstations/medium sized servers and SuSE for super-high end, such as running on a mainframe or Itanium. These alliances will grow and each company will help each other as each will realise that fighting will not get their anywhere.
I already know Linux, BSD users et cetera are willing to pay for software if they feel that it’s better than the alternative open source offering or if they want that product. And much like debman I also prefer having the software in a box (though it does cause storage problems after countless years of hoarding).
Are the major software companies going to need some sort of IDC survey before they consider the jump and begin developing for the free(r) platforms? Some have started to, but Adobe and Macromedia offering products would be a huge step.
you obviously didn’t read antiphon’s last sentence. i think that fragmentation is a very real possibility which, to a degree is already starting to happen. i imagine it may get worse if a big hardware company starts making its own distro and marketing it to consumers.
“As for porting, goto http://www.mainsoft.com and have a look at the win32 –> *NIX porting environment. Having fiddled with it, it is a breeze”
From their site:
“That’s why companies like Microsoft, Siebel and Computer Associates use Mainsoft Visual Mainwin. It seamlessly plugs into Visual Studio, giving them an unfair competitive advantage in the race to develop functionality rapidly and get versions running on many different platforms to market very, very quickly.”
Alistair,
Some of us are even willing to pay for *free* software, not just non-free software that is better than its free alternative. I’d rather my money support the continued development of free software than the success of a company that develops non-free software.
This is so obvious, I’m not sure why it is news. The more they start selling Linux for, the more people buy it. If they made a designer’s Linux all preconfigured, I would definitely pay much more for it. Until they get more commercial applications for Linux, it will not be on the desktop. For some reason, open source programmers are unwilling to make a wyiwyg web page editor, a stable word processor or pubishing program, or a fully featured vector drawing program. I think people are interested in value who buy Linux so selling something for 100 usd may sell but selling software for 500 won’t, in the desktop market. The software must also do something useful – people aren’t going to buy any Linux vaporware.
<<< I think it is about time people realised that linux software companies failed because they never addressed the real market demand. The majority of Linux users now DON’T care about games, they want commercial productivity applications, development tools, Graphical applications and so forth. >>>
I so agree. If a company makes a great product that has a decent price tag, I am all willing to buy it. I just bought Mandrake 9.1 – Standard, after all these years of downloading it. I don’t think I’ll *ever* download Mandrake again, I’ll just buy. I really do like Mandrake’s OS and I like how the retail one has drivers, I need (Nvidia). So on first boot, I can log into X without any problems 🙂