Marcus Brinkmann writes:
On Fri, Mar 22, 2002 at 04:30:44PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Third reason - "availability of sources" is very important issue for majority of programmers who use GNU/Linux.
Yes, but Real Programmers are really a minority of the users in general.
Hi all,
I think 'being a real programmer' is not the only issue, why someone would want to have sources available. Let's take the usual case of proprietary software: A company uses product X for a number of years, perhaps on an (in the meantime) obsolete hardware platform. Due to changes in legal procedures (say: tax), the software needs to be updated now and then. After a copule of years the producers of the software decide, it's not worth the trouble and stop supporting the specific features and platform used by company X. As usual that is done with say some months notice, but (due to changes in tax law) the software will have to be updated within 1 or 2 years -- they can't just continue working with the old version. Now X has to migrate (forced, hurriedly) to some other system with the same features. This costs (money, and often data, which is lost during migration).
With sources available and legally allowed to use them, X would have been able to have a choice: migrating or start maintaining themselves (hiring a programmer). If the license had been GPL, they could even have formed a cooperation with other companies using the same system thus sharing the cost of maintenance and further development.
Every time someone / some company is starting to use some software they are investing time, money, and work to produce knowhow (how to use that program, where to press the keys, how to fit it in their backup system and so on). This is rather expensive and after you got your people trained to the program, you do not want to get that investment suddenly taken away. At least you want to decide yourself between investing in maintenance yourself or the cost of retraining your workers. Free source is guaranteeing that choice (that's a managment issue, not only something for programmers). So if I have to decide for some software solution I have to take that into account: Proprietary Software might cost a lot in the long run.
Regards -- Markus (with 'k' :-)