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Re: (ASCEND) "Free" Software vs. Licensed (was "analyse RADIUS logs")
Quoting James Fischer (jfischer@supercollider.com)
On Subject: (ASCEND) "Free" Software vs. Licensed (was "analyse RADIUS logs")
Date: Fri, Aug 15, 1997 at 12:23:05PM +0000
> Bob Tanner wrote:
>
> >> > Since I am an ISP we are almost totally Unix. Where is the Unix
> >> > software support?
>
> and Dale E. Reed Jr. replied:
>
> >> There are two REALLY different markets. Most UNIX people are [sic]
> >> willing to put out money for software. They want their LINUX
> >> for nothing and their tools for free. How can Ascend make
> >> money there? Now on the NT market, people are willing to put
ascend doesn't need to rape us for sotware they are
raping us for hardware.... besides if it weren't for
free software the Ascend GRF would be years behind
ciscos as opposed to a impressive unit.....
(For those who don't know the guts of the GRF are
a comercial BSD unix and gated )
> >> money into products, so there IS a viable market for selling
> >> products on windoze.
and how many of you windoze people have paid for/and
registerd your Netscape, or Eudora, or FreeAgent etc ....
or how many of you windoze types actually legally own
all the software you are running on your computers ....
most of the windoze people I know sure-as-hell dont ....
before you upgraded to windows 95 your trumpet winsock.....
besides this whole WWW thing started because of freesoftware
(can anyone say NCSA mosaic, or CERN httpd.... I knew you
could).
or thanks to Freesoftware we have this mailing list to
cry back-n-forth to each other.....
>
> >> We sell only WindowsNT products (clients run on Win95) and
> >> have a lot of UNIX people coming over to our products because
> >> its basically turn-key supported products they don't have to
> >> compile and muck around with.
>
> then, Julian Cowley chimed in:
>
> >Ok, I'll go and forget that I ever had Netscape or Acrobat Reader (or even
> >Livingston's pminstall) on my SGIs, Suns and Linuxen.... How can Ascend
> >make money there?
>
> Well, it is obvious that Dale makes money selling software
> which would not even exist if not for the original (public
> domain) Radius. Dale should be forgiven for having a vested
> interest in promoting the one platform for which he has a
> product. Much like Ascend's "supported version" of Radius,
> Dale's Radius most likely:
>
> a) Costs money (one would presume that the customer
> is paying for the "added value", not the freely
> available baseline Radius code, but this is not
> known to me)
>
> b) Is supported by the vendor (as opposed to being
> supported by the usual consortium of users and
> contributors to a gnu or other public domain
> work)
>
> For some customers, this appears to be an advantage.
>
> The contention made by Dale - that "Unix" means "Linux", and
> all Unix software must be "free" to have "market share" confuses
> many issues:
Very True at my last count there were about 30 versions of UN*X
only 5 were FreeWare.
>
> 1) Unix has been very very good to many people, myself
> included. So (was) MVS. So has Windows in all
> flavors, but less-so given that it is rather hard
> to sell a $200K application to run on a $5K engine.
> Rather large checks still come in the mail every
> month from happy customers who paid (and are still
> paying) significant license fees for significant
> software that runs under Unix. Don't try to claim
> that people who run Unix are not willing to shell out
> serious piles of small green pieces of paper for tools
> and software. It is simply untrue.
Very true consider that the HP Development enviroment is
~$5K USD, and Openview with all the toys is ~$25k USD
I have no probs paying this kinna cash for tools
>
> 2) While it is clear that the internet is overwhelmingly
> Unix-based, this is not because the software is free.
> It is because things work this way. In the hands of an
> experienced professional, things work first time and
> every time.
>
> 3) While public domain applications, combined with
> built-in Unix facilities dominate the market for
> internet infrastructure, this is NOT because they
> are "free". It is because they are BETTER SUPPORTED
> than the commercial products. How so? Simple.
>
> 3a) Product selection is made less problematic,
> based upon the theory that a hundred (or
> a thousand) of your fellow professionals
> simply cannot all be wrong. Any known
> bugs or problems can be reviewed up front
> by checking the mass of FAQs, mailing list
> archives, and so on.
>
> 3b) Product support is made pain-free, since one
> can bet that someone else has run into the
> same question/problem that you have run into,
> and you can follow the adage "Ask, And Ye
> Shall Receive". It has always been thus,
> it will always be thus, both now and forever.
>
> Commercialization of the net is a recent fad,
> and this too will pass. The net was built via
> standards and cooperation. If the interlopers
> think that they can "get rich quick" think that
> they know better, good for them. I for one
> have no intention of ignoring a fellow
> professional's request for assistance, since I
> (like everyone) have benefited much more than
> I have contributed.
>
> 3c) Public domain software comes with SOURCE CODE.
> One is not a prisoner of a vendor's revision
> cycles and mixed agendas. If you want to add
> or modify, you can. This goes right down from
> the application to the Unix kernel, since even
> commercial vendors of Unix DO have the ability
> to license the source code, and have had this
> ability since day one.
not to metion there are potentialy 1000's of eyes scanning
through the millions of lines code looking for bugs
and security problems and general stupidity.....
>
> 4) There are platform alternatives. "Linux on Pentium boxes"
> is a very recent experiment in the grand scheme of things,
> so the jury is still out. While there are many small
> operations who think that a pair of Linux boxes are all
> they need to get into the ISP business, many of them at
> least "graduate" to SCO Unix at some point. Small
> shoestring operations are never a good market for a
> software vendor, since they simply lack capital. It is
> true that this small segment of the market appears large,
> since this group is the most vocal when crying for help
> on the mailing lists and in the newsgroups. "Linux for
> nothing, and tools for free" is a cute pun on the song,
> but much like the original song, it is the anthem of a
> "flash-in-the-pan" group.
>
> 5) Attempts have been made to create internet servers on
> Windows NT. While this may seem like a great idea,
> one would hope that at least Microsoft Network would
> have put its network where its mouth is, and use
> Microsoft's product. Humorously, they only recently
> stopped using Unix (in at least the most obvious places)
> and started using NT at all. They still do not use the
> product that Microsoft wishes to market to other ISPs.
>
> Web Week, July 21, 1997 - Page 26:
>
> "Curiously, MSN doesn't use the Microsoft commercial
> Internet System (MCIS), a suite of communications
> servers marketed to ISPs, which Microsoft has said
> is based upon the server software developed for MSN."
>
> I for one, am not going to trust a product that cannot
> even be sold to a captive customer. If MSN won't use
> Microsoft's product, why should we?
>
> 6) There is a great push from recent arrivals, wannabes,
> and "suits" with no sense of history or perspective
> to try to make running an internet site something
> that can be done by inexperienced/untrained personnel.
>
> This is not because there is a lack of trained
> professionals, but only because the "suits" do not
> want to pay $150K a year to some "long-haired, drug
> crazed hippy" who happens to be very very very good
> at what he/she does. What these folks fail to understand
> is that the internet is very much a moving target, and
> moving targets require skilled sharpshooters and snipers.
> Good sharpshooters and snipers cost good money, and demand
> highly customized handcrafted weapons.
>
> The "solution" being marketed to these folks is a mix of
> GUI front-ends and canned scripts. What these
> customers do not realize is that these "simplified"
> products simply cannot solve the problem, since the
> "problem" is the need for a basic understanding of a
> wide range of areas. Therefore, the customers for
> these products (perhaps) can handle the day-to-day
> repetitive tasks (which are likely handled by cron jobs
> on a system run by competent personnel) with these
> GUI-based systems, but have no idea what is going on
> (or what is NOT going on) when things go wrong.
>
> The result is that the amount of money paid is more than
> it would have cost to employ a competent and experienced
> professional. The equation is:
>
> ( Canned_Apps_Cost + Downtime_Cost
> + Learning_Curve_Cost
> + Lost_Opportunity_Cost
> + Cost_Of_Low_Wage_Workers )
>
> is much much greater than
>
> ( Cost_Of_High_Wage_Workers )
>
> If there is even a small group of people moving specific
> traditional Unix-based tools (such as radius) to NT, I
> think that this is likely limited to specific single-purpose
> workstations/severs, and does not imply that anyone is
> scrapping Sun Ultras, Dec Alphas, SGI boxes, or any of the
> other usual platforms. I would guess that "offloading" a
> specific task that is not a part of the basic
> mission-critical dataflow to a Win95 or WinNT box is more
> of a personal choice.
>
> 7) Just to make things worse, many of the default choices
> for a professional internet site are simply not available
> for (not ported to) platforms like NT, because the
> community of developers/users see no reason to take a
> good tool and expend effort to cram it into a poor
> platform. Therefore, people who select platforms like
> NT are FORCED to buy commercial apps, since they have no
> other choice.
>
> As for Dale's question
>
> "How can Ascend make money there?" (selling to people
> who use Unix")
>
> This is simple. If Ascend's products are not fully
> compatible with the industry standards (Unix and
> associated tools), people will SCRAP their Ascends,
> and buy something else that is compatible. Ascend
> sells hardware. They live and die by their market
> share, so they are well advised to "bundle" software
> tools that reduce their cost of tech support, and
> freely distribute high-value software that keeps their
> products easy to use.
>
> If Ascend decided that giving away K56 hardware (in
> order to maintain market share) was a good idea,
> I would expect that I will continue to see free
> upgrades to microcode, and at least the occasional
> software tool, simply to make sure that I do not
> dump Ascend for another vendor.
>
> As for Ascend's ability to sell me software, all
> I can say is that FIRST, I need bug-free, organized,
> well documented, and bulletproof upgrades to microcode,
> THEN, I will think about buying my tools from them.
exactly given the apparent Software stablilty in variuos
versions of their MAx and Pipe software.... I'd be leary
buying other software from them.
>
> Hey - I charge serious bucks for "wisdom" like the above, and
> people willingly pay it. But here, I offer it freely to my
> fellow professionals. Ain't the net neat?
>
> Rather than "carpe diem", on the Internet, once is wise to "carpe PM"
>
> james fischer jfischer@supercollider.com
>
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