Yesterday we had discussions about the FOSS model and its various aspects. Tojin analysed the economic aspect and he says
---
There are so many people working in the proprietary software industry and if there is only FOSS out there so many people are gonna lose jobs. Now both proprietary and free software needs service and so the effects cancels. The jobs of developers will not be there and the economy suffers. He argues that only if the money changes hands the country benifits. Also he thinks it is sinister about the way GNU/Linux is distributed, he says it has made so complx that they need to go to experts everytime.
He is not thinking about the obvious advantages. In a country like India we cannot afford to pay a huge amount of money on softwares. They are completely ignoring the points of technical fitness of the software developed. They still think of the FOSS as something like this
A company develops a product and give away that for free (download)
and asks how the developers get money ?
They completely ignores that FOSS is a process not a product in which lots of people around the world and it is centered around the end user. Other argument is that anyway we are getting windows and linux free (pirated in case of windows) and all things that could be done with windows can be done with windows and there is no point in moving away from windows.
They don't think piracy is not a problem, as long as they don't come to you and arrest they think they are safe. It is like you don't hesitate to steal if you are sure you won't be cought. Also they neglect the social aspect (but the former point nullifies this). Anyway you are ready to give it to your friend so the social aspect doesn't matter anymore.
the discussion continues .... Some one give me an answer to the economic aspect (the loss of jobs and affecting the economy)
PS: You can join the discussion at LJ http://www.livejournal.com/~pravi/7240.html
There are so many people working in the proprietary software industry and if there is only FOSS out there so many people are gonna lose jobs.
This is one of the biggest myths in this debate, and one of the biggest untruths.
For every MS Office software being made by at most a few thousand developers, there are lakhs of support personnel who are involved in selling it, lakhs involved in installing it and lakhs involved in supporting it(and I am probably only talking about India here). You take MS Office out of the picture and replace it with Open Office. *Maybe* a large part of those MS Office developers lose their jobs, but the rest (the sellers, installers and supporters) are still needed.
On the other hand more Office developers will get jobs now: a) The people at Sun who are working on Open Office full time b) The people at Red Hat and SuSe and others who package Open Office and sell it as part of their distribution. They would need full time people working on OpenOffice (and maybe others at the same time) because they need to make it work well with the rest of the distro, as well as answer their client support requests knowledgably (they cant say "Go ask the software developers", after all)
On top of all this, because the software is legal and freely available, the volume of all the people in just this one product line will be, given time (and in case of MS Office, monopolistic bundling practices), far more than the proprietary and expensive packages.
If you look hard at the figures, it is difficult to see how the sum total of people involved gets affected in any way - it should just get better.
- Sandip
--- Praveen A pravi.a@gmail.com wrote:
Yesterday we had discussions about the FOSS model and its various aspects. Tojin analysed the economic aspect and he says
There are so many people working in the proprietary software industry and if there is only FOSS out there so many people are gonna lose jobs. Now both proprietary and free software needs service and so the effects cancels. The jobs of developers will not be there and the economy suffers. He argues that only if the money changes hands the country benifits. Also he thinks it is sinister about the way GNU/Linux is distributed, he says it has made so complx that they need to go to experts everytime.
People in computer field have no right to talk about jobs. If this logic is backported to pre-computer era, we should not have had computers at all. After all computers have taken off millions of jobs in one form. But see the overall effects of computers, there is net increase in the econmic activity in the world.
Other aspect of economics is that when the cost comes down, usage grows, thus spurring service industry which will compensate the so called job loss.
Raman.P
________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partner online Go to: http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony
hello, i appreciate raman's reply :D.
There are so many people working in the proprietary software industry and if there is only FOSS out there so many people are gonna lose jobs.
i didnt understand why they will loose job. its only micros**t who is making win***s. most of the service based s/w industry is making custom-made s/w solutions which is infact as worth as _raw_ code for others. they pack their sandboxes, inserting the EULA and some unearthy privacy statements and ship it, since it became the habit and nothing specially had to be protected, otherthan the vulnerabilities in their own code. Suppose you dont have anybody who is going to make s/w free for you. what will you do, will weave your own code, just like ford doing. in that case too, developers wont loose jobs. and if service and support can bring money, it can bring a _lot_. and for the money-thirsty ventures open source wont restrict they from charging their s/w as far as they are conformal to the licences.
Also he thinks it is sinister about the way GNU/Linux is distributed, he says it has made socomplx that they need to go to experts everytime.
the difference is everytime a windows hangs you need someone from hyderabad and it does hang a lot. gnu/linux, if it hangs ( just like i^2= -1 ) you need a gnu/linux guy, he may be even from a high school. and dont think everything is as easy as WYSWYG, it may be easy to install application s/ws in wndows, but life beyond that is just a hell.
A company develops a product and give away that
for free (download) and asks how the developers get money ?
dont worry, the god of foss wont allow his people to be famined, for that he will shower mannah on them ( exodus 3.15-16). the companies who are benefited from the s/w will ofcourse fund and volunteer the work. and there are lots, gcc is the prime example.
Other argument is that anyway we are getting windows and linux free (pirated in case of windows) and all things that could be done with windows can be done with windows and there is no point in moving away from windows.
can you tell me a company which is using pirated wind**s ?. nobody dude. its not like you sit in some darkhaven cave and use pirated windows and be ecstatical about saving 9000. oh!, i missed. you need to understand freedom before that.
===== ~amal Freedom is worth living for, http://www.gnu.org
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
amal manuel amalmanuel@yahoo.com writes:
i didnt understand why they will loose job. its onlymicros**t who is making win***s. most of the service based s/w industry is making custom-made s/w solutions which is infact as worth as _raw_ code for
Heh., you are right. This misconception arises because, even these service based s/w industries dream of being M$ one day.. ;-) So, they somehow seem to take their examples from such a company, and fail to see that it does not apply to them.
-
amal manuel -
Joe Steeve -
Praveen A -
Raman.P -
Sandip Bhattacharya