Konrad:
> Wrong: it decreases the direct sales value, but
> hugely increases the use value and with that the
> indirect sales value.
And the "indirect sales value" matters not a
whit to the owner of the software (or the
shareholders of the owner) unless the owner
is actively reaping a significant fraction
of that "indirect sales value" (which Nokia
wasn't).
I'm sorry; the FOSS folks have argued for years
that they have a workable financial model but
I see no evidence that this is true for anything
other than individuals and relatively small-scale
commercial operations.
> LGPL'ing Qt also opened a major backdoor for it: you
> can safely introduce it in any project where there are
> no major reasons against it
Unfortunately, as has already been mentioned by several
other folks, the fact that a given piece of software is
licensed under the terms of the (L)GPL is a huge factor
arguing against its use in several industries. The more-
open licenses (BSD, MIT, etc.) are free from the large
burdens that (L)GPL imposes for disclosure, upgrade-
ability, extensive ongoing code analysis, and the like.
Atlant
-----Original Message-----
From: interest-bounces+aschmidt=dekaresearch....@qt-project.org
[mailto:interest-bounces+aschmidt=dekaresearch....@qt-project.org] On Behalf Of
Konrad Rosenbaum
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2012 5:02 AM
To: interest@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Interest] Digia to acquire Qt from Nokia
Hi,
On Tuesday 14 August 2012 17:47:37 Atlant Schmidt wrote:
> Chuck:
> > Adding LGPL as a license option had an enormous impact on the
> > commercial business but it also grew the number of users by an order
> > of magnitude over the same time period.
>
> But all of those new LGPL users were *NOT* paying to
> use Qt (except for those that bought support contracts).
Correct, but that does not matter!
> An enormous-but-non-paying user base still supports
> my argument that going FOSS decreases the commercial
> value of a software property.
Wrong: it decreases the direct sales value, but hugely increases the use value
and with that the indirect sales value.
Whether this is a problem or a desired outcome depends on your business model:
do you sell software and then forget about it (like Microsoft, Adobe, etc.) or
do you offer paid support (the other nine tenth of the industry)?
See "The Magic Cauldron"[1], specifically section 9 [2].
You'll find Nokias business model in regards to Qt under "Widget Frosting"
(make Nokia phones more attractive for developers) and Trolltechs and Digias
under "Give Away the Recipe, Open a Restaurant" (grow a user base, then extract
money by being better at supporting it than anybody else could hope to be).
Even if a lot of commercial licensees went LGPL, many of them still need
support of some kind. So it's not a complete loss - it is just a shift in
business models.
LGPL'ing Qt also opened a major backdoor for it: you can safely introduce it in
any project where there are no major reasons against it. Eventually this will
generate some support income that would otherwise have been spent on another
framework vendor.
[1] http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/magic-cauldron/
[2] http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/magic-cauldron/ar01s09.html
Konrad
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