« More fun with subversion | Main | We validate. »

Force markets

Don Park's Blog, on Mitch Kapor's Open Source Application Foundation:

What I am afraid of is the erosion in the sense of value for software. If OSAF succeeds, consumers will have access to a wide array of high quality software for free. Most likely, every PC will start to ship with them preloaded. Every time a new OSAF product ships, a market segment will dies. OSAF paints a picture of the future where consumers are expected to pay for contents and services, but software is free.

But how is this substantively different from the death of market segments via Microsoft integrating functionality into the OS? Anybody remember Central Point PC Tools? How many products got killed off because Microsoft shipped "just good enough" versions of commercial utilities with new OS releases? For some reason, if MS does this, it's "competition," but if OSS products enter the market, all of a sudden programming as a profession is in grave danger and something must be done. What happened to market forces in that argument? Compete on quality if you can't on price then.

Arguing against the consumer getting higher quality products more cheaply because the software industry will make less money seems to me to have the argument exactly backwards.

Posted by John on October 21, 2002 8:26 PM |