In SCO: GPL threatens $229B software market InfoWorld reports McBride (SCO's CEO) as stating:
"The world, especially here in America, is shifting to one that is an information society," McBride said. "In the future, is that $229 billion in software still going to be there? Or in the case of the Free Software Foundation's goal, is proprietary software going to go away?"
Well, if our society is shifting to an information society, it also means that the software 'industry' could gain even more importance in such society where the flux of information is critical to people's everyday lives.
In such case, isn't it obvious that the software industry (or should I better say the software development activities) should be also shifting? And why is it wrong if this shift is towards open source software?
McBride is actually making a good point in favor of open source software, and he does not realize it. If we have shifted towards an information society, why should an enormous amount of money be spend in developing commercial software? Instead the software could be as 'free' as the air around us (or become a world public good), and various corporations, non-profit organizations, the governments around the world, etc., can concentrate on more important activities.
In such society, software will no longer be able to provide competitive advantage. Instead, the current commercial software companies will have to reinvent themselves, and people will need to become more skilled in the way they use and integrate various open source software.
Shifts in the means of economic production have changed throughout the history. The philosophy and the economics of software development will have to change sooner or later. Maybe we are already in the midst of such shift.
We may be in a shift, as you say, but in my view the open source movement is not the direction that the software industry will ultimately take.
The direction that the industry is taking is toward "software as a service." It makes a lot of sense that this happens, and for the reasons that you give; that is, software is becoming (or has become) critical to the functioning of our society, like reliable electricity, clean water, and so on.
Software will never be completely free as air, as you assert. It takes far too much intellectual and physical resource to develop significant software. Sure, there will be some free software - hobbyists will continue to give their efforts away on projects they find interesting. But, tell me, who's going to spend their life developing check-processing software for a large banking consortium? Who's going to develop the software for classified military systems? Who's going to devote their spare time working on the stuff I do - maintenance planning and reference software for large commercial aircraft? Who'll do the embedded stuff that runs your car, dishwasher and microwave oven?
No one - unless they are paid to do so. The open source people work on stuff they find interesting, cool, and fun. The fact is, though, that almost all software is utilitarian. It isn't sexy.
So, some small amount of software will be free, but the vast majority will continue to be commercial or in-house software, and some will be a for-pay service or utility, like your electricity, water, and other stuff that's needed everywhere.
Developing software isn't a moral exercise; it's an economic one. It can't possibly survive under the open source model, because it takes money to develop it. Any company in the business of developing software must recoup that money somehow. It may not be by selling licenses to the software directly to consumers, but it won't be by giving the software away.