NOTE: Though our topic is on software, yet it does not limit to software, it also includes the file we use software to produce (i.e. every other created content) e.g. books, videos, audio… etc.
Distribution of software entails how software is made available for use. Gone are the days where you have to visit a merchant shop to purchase CD for your software (and other content), the world is now a global village where you can stay in the corner of your room and get anything in a twinkle of an eye. We do not say that other existing medium has been neglected, but our submission is that things are changing which also that we must do everything in our capacity to adapt to the changes.
A huge amount of resources (both human and material resources) is invested towards making software, yet most of these software are acquired for free by the users of the software. How are the software developers are supposed to have their ROI (Return of Investment) in this manner?
Apart from this factor which frustrate profitability efforts of the software companies, the world is a competitive world where price of the same product/content varies with no or little significance variance in the quality of the products, even some quality software are cheaper than most of “less quality” software to the extent of some software producing companies offering absolutely free software.
It is a general notion that nothing good is free but by the order of the day and trending situations, we now have free software topping the list as the best software and even far better than the paid software. So, the questions are that “how do these freemium thrive to get their ROI?” and “how would the paid software expect to survive the competitive system?”. The answers to these questions will not be answered here but in the scope 10 of this course “Computer Basics” but there are various classes/instances on how software are distributed, this is what we will deal with.
Paid versus Freemium (Free): Paid software are made available with a price tag, any attempt to get such software without going through normal protocol is “stealing” and one may face the law for such action especially in a law abiding environment whereas, free software are made available without a price (they are completely and absolutely free.
Open source versus Close source: Open source means that the source code of the software is made available by the owner to inspect, modify, readjustment and enhanced another individual while in close source, the owner of the code will not even distribute the source code and even any individual that had an access to the source code by any other means must not inspect, modify, readjustment and enhance the source code, if done otherwise, the fellow is a criminal in the face of the law with the offence of copyright infringement.
"Source code" is the part of software that most computer users don't ever see; it's the code computer programmers can manipulate to change how a piece of software—a "program" or "application"—works. Programmers who have access to a computer program's source code can improve that program by adding features to it or fixing parts that don't always work correctly. - opensource.com
Most times, open source goes along with free and also close source goes along with paid but this is not always necessary meaning that a software can be free and open source or free and close source and vice versa in the case of paid software.
The profitability of software (especially in the case of freemium/open source) will be discussing in scope 10, and this is beyond software as it applies to other contents and concepts and even the kind of world we are building at ConQuesTECH.
At ConQuesTECH we like to say that we're interested in the ways open source values and principles apply to the world beyond software. We like to think of open source as not only a way to develop and licence computer software, but also an attitude. That the kind of system we are building and that our quest.
0 comments:
Post a Comment