Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Adrian Bunk]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 08:39:52AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 04:32:38PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > > Your model is fine, there is nothing wrong with it but there isn't a lot
> > > right with it either.  You can't really grow your business under that 
> > > model.
> > 
> > I don't disagree with this statement, but I don't see its relevance.
> > What inference can you make from this? 
> > 
> > Are you asserting that the trend toward commoditisation of software
> > isn't real -- that companies are _not_ becoming less inclined to pay to
> > license proprietary software when there is a Free alternative which they
> > can use instead? Or merely that it makes you unhappy?
> 
> Creating software costs money.
> Open source doesn't produce very much money.
> A world in which all software is produced via support contracts doesn't
> look like a world in which there is very much new software.
> 
> Yes, that makes me unhappy.  I like programming, I like being paid to
> do it.  I've done the consulting gig and that's a crappy way to live,
> you don't make enough money to actually fix things, you make enough to
> hack things so they sort of work.  No customer is going to pay you to
> rearchitect GCC when what they want is support for their new chip.
> 
> That's probably a good enough test case.  Explain to me how your support
> contracts are ever going to provide enough money to redo GCC or build
> something equally substantial.
>...

HP sponsored one year of Mark Mitchell's work as GCC Release Manager.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory have sponsored the work for a new
hand-crafted recursive-descent C++ parser for GCC.

Apple contributed a precompiled header implementation for GCC.

> Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed