Counting money openly? Introduction

    Without sharing the views of the old man who visited Immanuel at breakfast, I’ll try to analyze the objective points of the need to be born from the shadow of the phenomenon of free software (STR) as an example of a part of it that facilitates the accounting hustle and bustle of our ordinary, suffering mortal metal consciousness.

    I think the necessity of the STR phenomenon is proved by its very existence and is no longer in doubt, at least among readers of this blog. I have not formulated the hypothesis that open source software will sooner or later dominate in all mass market segments, and especially where software plays an infrastructure, which means a very important role for everyone, seems to be quite sound.

    Taking it into service, take a look at the market (markets) accounting (business) software. This market is not monolithic and it is not difficult for any marketer to divide it into segments.

    The question is, are there any of these segments where, according to the accepted hypothesis, the existence or even dominance of STRs is possible? Today, the factual side of the matter does not allow us to say that this is possible. Neither the American, nor the European, nor even the Russian market give examples of successfully developing and really claiming any significant market share of open source software projects.

    However, to conclude that this is not possible in principle, it seems to me premature. Just because the arrival of open source software is just beginning. Solutions such as Desktop Linux, OpenOffice.org, Jabber are just starting their way to conquer the market.

    Understanding of the processes is often hindered by pseudo-analysts, who at first inflated the hype in the circle of the imminent arrival of Linux, and then sarcastically grinned at the failure of its arrival, which they had recently predicted.

    It must be understood that the process of bringing open source software to the market is different from the process of changing one proprietary market leader to another. This process can take a long time, because there is no single force interested in the leader’s accession to the throne as quickly as possible.

    If a proprietary product in the short term after the appearance does not occupy a sufficient market share, then we can safely declare its insolvency due to, as a rule, limited resources allocated by the investor for its rise. This is the law of the proprietary software market. It is not applicable to assessing the prospects of a STR project.

    STR projects usually do not have significant financial resources. Therefore, the speed of progress of such projects may not be high. But on the other hand, these projects do not have a sword of Damocles return on investment within a fixed time frame, since open source software projects, as a rule, from the very beginning live on self-sufficiency and / or small sources of personal resources of developers.

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