🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2864@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> LeBlanc@uk.ac.mcc (A. V. Le Blanc) writes:
>Earlier in this thread, it was suggested that a company would not
>pay, e.g., $100000 for software which nine other companies would
>then grab under the GPL, while with no GPL all ten companies would
>contribute $10000 each.
>
>Why couldn't all ten companies contribute to have something
>written under the GPL?  Several Big Names have contributed to
>the GNU project.  In that case, of course, the project was started
>before the contributions were received.  But for specialised
>software, the companies who are going to use it would know
>who their competitors are and find it easier to coordinate funding.
>
>Why should they contribute, you ask?  Because if your nine
>competitors are going to share the cost of a tool which will
>threaten your share of the market, and if your contribution is
>considerably less than the cost of going your own way and buying
>an equivalent tool, you cannot afford not to contribute.  And,
>just as freely available programs benefit from wide usage, which
>helps spot bugs and weaknesses quicker, which finds fixes for them
>faster, and which makes new contributions to them, so too the same
>benefits would accrue to companies who shared the expense of writing
>a specialised software package.

What you don't mention is why they might each, individually, want the
software in the first place. Most clients that I have come across who
want specialized software systems are hoping it will give them a
competitive advantage in the marketplace. It won't appeal to them one
bit to ask their fellow competitors to share in the costs - they don't
want their competitors to even know the software exists until they
have it in production, cutting costs, or whatever.

This is, of course, the problem with competition.
-- 
"When in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town
meeting, to express their opinion on some subject that is vexing the land, that
I think is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever
assembled in the United States." - Thoreau