http://ardour.org/

Not even written in the lead developer’s spare time (*), but written in his full time, because he wanted to and could. An exception? Perhaps. Relevant? I think so.

(*) err, that would be me.

Adobe apparently still think they’re in the former. In their shoes (which I’m not obviously) I’d be more worried about ending up in the latter (gimp 3.0 seems promising).

Fisrt we have to know that more than 90% of the software market is selling and building software as service. That means someone needs special software, company A will build it and the customer will pay the complete development. So for over 90% of the market we don’t need any income through licensing.

Now look at the market which is smaller than 10%. Here we have to distinguish between to type of customers: 1. private persons and 2. companies and business people.
First take a look at the private person. Private person buying from time to time software and downloading software sometimes. This has absolutely noting to to with the license, you get also commercial non-free software in the internet and you will never be able to stop it because it’s the nature of software to be shared. But you earn still some money from private persons who prefere to buy a box.
The second group are the business people and companies. They prefer always to buy software. Look at the OpenOffice example. First Sun stopped StarOffice but than more and more customers demanded StarOffice. Why? Not because the like software they can’t change, they can’t share and they can’t study and not because the want to spent more money. It’s because they want software from a provider who is “responsible” for the software and a phone number they can call if they have some problems.

So look at the whole picture. We have over 90% of the market which is not influenced through licensing. From the rest of the 10% we have the market of professional customers. They prefere always a product from a comapny instead of something from the internet (the OOo example shows this). Finally we have a home user market which is by far the smallest part, probably under 5%. This users already copy their software completely independent from the license. This has probably two reasons: 1. often it’s to expansive for this users and 2. probably nobody of them really needs this (professional) programs they just have it that they can say “i have it”. But maybe this still helps companies. Because on this way you create people which are addicted to your software and maybe in the future they will work in this area and will than use and buy this software because than they are in the group of companies and business people who buy software, not because of the license but because of other practical values.

When it is free software as in freedom, how would you expect a software company to make any money with it? Free as in freedom allows -any- user to distribute copies of it free of charge. So the software company would sell exactly ONE copy of their product, after that you would find it everywhere on the web, for free, including the source code. You could then call it a “fork”.

Do you get the idea why companies like Adobe are not at all excited about producing “free” software (as in freedom)?

And do you also get the idea why nobody out there would even have to pay for that software?

And this is exactly the reason why so many vendors will never go down the Linux alley. Unless you are in the services and support business, like IBM and Novell and many others in fact are, there simply is no business to be made with Linux or free (as in freedom) software.

And generating income via services, printed documentation and support is not everybody’s idea why the went into the software development business in the first place.

As for the “perfectly good or even better” alternatives: I have more than a dozen of applications on my Macs for which NO alternative on Linux exists that even comes close to what “the original” does.

And it will probably never happen, because there is a simple truth behind the development of free software: It’s either done because a sponsor pays for the development or it is done because the developer gets a kick out of writing it or because he simply needs it.

Developing software for professionals is cost-extensive and consumes a lot of time – and must meet customer demands. I honestly cannot imagine open source developers writing programs like PhotoShop, Aperture or Ableton Live in their spare time or because a corporate sponsor could be found for that.

Linux is great for developers, because mostly developers are using it.

Linux sucks for professional users, because none of the stuff they are looking for exists for it — unless they work for a company that has developed their own tools for that platform.

Anyway – I know that none of the Linux-geeks here seconds my opinion, but that doesn’t matter. ;-)

Let me add this:
I would really like to pay for commercial software. I would even pay twice as much as the windows version costs. But only if it’s commercial Free (as in freedom) Software. I will not support proprietary software whether it’s commercial proprietary software or gratis proprietary software.

I wonder if anyone mentioned that Photoshop seems to work pretty well in wine these days.

From my experience, linux users often don’t pay for commercial software either because they don’t port things, or there are perfectly good (if not better) alternatives.