Question about Open Source programs.

[bazoukas]

I understand that with OO apps companies can share them and they dont have to spend precious time and lots of money in writing a program that somebody else has already writen. They can take that same app modified to their needs and make it even better.
Ok that I can understand and it makes sense to me how companies can save alot of money and time.

But this i dont understand though.

There are companies out there that specialize in creating specific type of programs. For example, a company that makes a very high end app that can be used in making special effects (Star wars II). That specific program is not being used by many. Infact I know that for MAYA there are right now ONLY 6 known job openings in the USA. in other words that company cant make enough by providing tech support with so few companies using it simply because is VERY high end.

If MAYA for example decided to give their program and source code out for free how would they make any money. I can understand they can charge money for it, but people can share the code and the app between them for free. So that eliminates any chance for MAYA to get more money.
Hence making them going under for not being able to pay their expenses.

How a company that specializes in writing code for specific apps (MAYA) can make money if they GPL it?

[Void Main]

I'm not sure what you mean by "OO", I assume some for of Open Source. As far as the MAYA example they would probably go out of business OR be hired up by the movie companies to continue development. With Open Source "Software Companies" are pretty much a thing of the past (which is why M$ should be sweating if things really explode with Linux and Open Source).

There are two different perspectives when talking about Open Source.

1) from the perspective of the programmer who wants to become a gazillionaire writing proprietary software. Control is with the software vendor.

2) from the perspective of the end user who wants to save a lot of money (end user can also mean a company). Control is with the user.

The people who are against open source usually fall into category 1. Those for it fall into category 2. Now the movie companies make a lot of money off of this software and if the source were opened up and the MAYA company dissolved then the movie companies could hire their own programmers to make the software do what they want (and probably get more prompt service because they actually have the source and the ability to change it). Now one movie company may add one feature that the other can benefit from and vice versa. Each company has total control over the software.

Now what would happen today if MAYA just decided to close up shop and go out of business and not release the code? Movie studios would be stuck with what they have until someone else comes along, if they come along. This can not happen if MAYA was open source. A somewhat lesser example of an open source tool for the film industry is "Film Gimp". And there are other tools, not sure if big time studios use Cinelarra or not (I think not) but I do know they use Linux more and more all the time, I believe for rendering clusters mostly.

Proprietary software benefits the software company, open source software benefits the end user.

[bazoukas]

Allright void. Thanks for clearing that up. I was reading a book about OO (open source) and it made the point about companies writing their own programs but the question (on my previous post) came to my mind right away.

[Void Main]

"OO" has always meant "Object Oriented" to me, and OOP is "Object Oriented Programming". There are several acronyms for the various open source but I've never seen "OO". There is OSS (Open Source Software) and somewhat related: OSD, OSP, GPL, GNU, FSF, BSD, etc, etc. What does "OO" stand for in that book?

[Panos]

OO stands for object-oriented programming and not Open Source software, true. I'm curious about that as well. As for the original question, we should be realistic. Companies or software vendors can of course charge for GPL'd software. However it's more than certain that they wouldn't make any profit, since their software could be distributed for free under the GPL. They could release it however under more restrictive Open Source licences and make more out of it (note that I'm personally not in favour of them). As void said, only the end user will benefit from such a move and not the vendor. That's why the latter are more than reluctant to release their products under the GPL.