All these licenses and business models

[David]

On Fri, 2002-01-18 at 15:34, DeBug wrote:
> D>I am not so sure I understand the tax mechanism you discuss,
> D>but am interested never the less.
> Napster case is still in minds of millions
> The idea is simple: those who want to continue to violate
> copyrights pay a tax that will allow them to do it in other words
> they should buy a copyright-violation-right. This will probablly work
> if we ALLOW THEM TO CHOOSE WHO WILL GET the money they pay
> Many will agree to spend some money on software and be free of
> copyrights
> 
> --
> Best regards,
>  DeBug                            mailto:debug at centras.lt
> --
> 
I see what you mean now. I suppose the problems may be substancial here.
Who pays what tax and on what. ie a small company pays the tax and get
hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of software aterwards or large
corporations pay the tax instead of licenses. This may put out of
business a software company with most eggs in one basket (carried out a
huge development for a company). I do like the underlying idea though.

I really think that the Open Source free or very cost effective non user
licensed software community idea the way forward. To drive down the cost
of software and increase on the quality. We must find a way to encourage
and grow the small companies with good ideas/products and allow them to
sell their wares and at the same time somehow stopping the larger
companies using their size and legal domination from squashing smaller
companies and innovation.

To me we have two opposite ends of a spectrum here we have the large
financially backed corporations charging an arm and a leg to locked in
customers and the free software community. i.e pay loads or pay nothing 

When it seems obvious the answer is a pay a reasonable price for a
product and be able to change horses with little or no costs when you
feel like it. Like any other product part exchange the license as a
currency and buy a bigger / better system if it exists (no proprietary
closed file formats etc.).   

To me software is a product like a piece of formed metal or wood and not
an idea or thought simply. As much goes into developing a piece of
software as does crafting household furniture or similar. 

Perhaps forcing larger companies to reivest profits into smaller
companies / communities without taking any control for tax breaks would
be a mechanism but these would take milenia to instegate as the banks
and financial institutions who really run things have a vested interest
in large bullying corporates (money money money).

I feel that if we can establish a small company / developer business
model that works and can evade the requirement for small companies to
get investments and loads of sales people, marketing management type
issues to distract them by using some of the momentum the Open Source
community have created we are on a winner. This would mean a mechnism
where developer co-orperation is encouraged, the Internet is used as
your distribution channel and protection is in place against hostile
attacks by larger companies to steal the product we have a chance.

The current license issues are where the larger companies win all the
time with legal teams coming out of their ears and they will simply
steal your code/idea and kill you in an elongated court battle which
they will win (no doubts) as they simply keep going until you have no
resourse to defend yourself. To defeat this mass distribution and
acceptance must take place quickly to get your products out and secured.
As small developers we must not allow the community to self destruct
there is a momentum still there and this should be used to best effect -
yes stillencouraging the hobbiest to contribute code and get recodnitino
but also allow creaters and developers to be paid as in employment for
what they are good at. I believe teh best software comes from small
companies and the worst marketing a large company is an exact opposite
of that. And with Open Source small companies can have their QA/QC,
sales and distributino taken care of. As long as their product matches
the market requirement they should be competative very quickly.

Sorry for the rant I think I went a bit off topic there

Regards 
David
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