Python obfuscation

[Chris Mellon]

On 12/25/05, Peter Maas <peter.maas at somewhere.com> wrote:
> yepp schrieb:
> > Once you got the model of free and open source software you can't but shake
> > your head at obfuscating people treating their users as enemies.
>
> Sorry but this is naive nonsense. Open source is a good model but
> it can't be applied everywhere. Look at the following example:
>
> There is a company who is developing and marketing a single application.
> It is a simulation software for industrial processes which embodies an
> enormous amount of knowledge accumulated by the hard work of many
> individuals since about twenty years, algorithmic, process, implementation,
> market knowlegde. This application is of great value to the customers
> because it helps them save lots of money and improve the quality of their
> products. No wonder that they have (and are willing) to pay a considerable
> price for it.
>

You just described UNIX, which has been all but replaced by open
source projects, and the general state of the operating system market
a few decades ago.

> If the company would decide to go open source it would be dead very soon
> because it wouldn't no longer have a competitive advantage. Most customers
> wouldn't see the necessity to pay high prices, the competition would use
> the source code in their own products, the earnings would fall rapidly and
> there wouldn't be enough money availabe to pay highly skilled developpers,
> engineers and scientists for continued development.
>
> In certain sense suppliers and customers ARE enemies because they have
> different interests. The customer will pay a price only if it is neccessary
> to get the product. If he can get it legally for nothing he won't pay anything
> or at least not enough.
>
> So please: continue praising OSS (as I do) but don't make ideological claims
> that it fits everywhere.

You're looking at the wrong things here. What you're describing is
actually a potentially very successfull open source project - many
companies, single source, highly technical, high price. An open source
project could easily succeed in this area. Of course, it would not be
in the interest of the current monopoly supplier to open source thier
product. But a third party that started such a project could quite
possibly succeed. Not that it neccesarily would, knowing what I know
about business - hell, I can't even get approval to use Eclipse on a
couple desktops.

>
> Peter Maas, Aachen
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>