Wow
One of my rantings got the attention of the great Don
Box. He didn't say anything other than it was interesting. I wonder what he
thinks about it.
Well, I've been treking from blog to blog all afternoon, killing some time
and seeing what other people rant about. Somehow I found my way to
Gnome-girl, easily one of the cutest
bloggers out there (besides my GF of course). This then led me to a website
handing out nude
blogging awards
. Gosh, hope none of you make it on there
anytime soon [shudders].
Back to open source. I'm going to be flat out honest with you, (a la the
Scobelizer's Corporate Blogging Manifesto) in telling
you that I only use open source stuff to generate traffic on my website. I
created the ASP.NET Forums Configurator as a freebee with source code to
illustrate some WinForms techniques, and to advertise for my other products. The
forthcoming Intellisense Enabler for Web.Config will also be released under the
GPL for the public to improve upon (although we will probably charge for the
VS.NET add-in to automate it's use). While I believe thigs like this should be
freely available to the public, the ultimate goal is to get the browser to see
the other cool (and inexpensive) stuff we do, and buy something.
While I believe in theory to the idea that information should be in the
public domain, it's not always practical. There is a universal formula that has
been around since before E=mc2. Here it is: time =
money. If someone is going to invest a significant amount of
time in something, then someone else looking to use that something needs to
compensate the individual for their
time. What you see right now in the industry are 2 completely
opposite ends of the spectrum: Software companies charging too much for their
software, and Open Source not charging anything (until you need support, in
which case you have to sell your liver on eBay).
Instead of trying to beat Open Source at it's own game, the B0rg (MS) should
consider targeting the root of the problem: people have to pay too much
for software. Having
license-management features like Product Activation are
wonderful if they contribute to a reduction in price. This, however, is not the
case, and all it does is instill a general discomfort in the consumer, and may
actually increase the illegal activity surrounding their product. This is a
fundamental tenet of my
company's philosophy
.
I think I'm done bloggin for the dayl Gonna go get ready for my first day at
my new job. 'It will be nice workin with
proper villians again*.'
*The first person to correctly guess the movie from which this quote was
derived will get a free copy of GenX.NET 2.1 (when it's released), our flagship
ADO.NET exporter.