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A small, concise explanation IMO can be: software is an implementation/modelisation of an idea. So not a product. You may pay someone for his/shes expertise an
by xte 8y ago
A small, concise explanation IMO can be: software is an implementation/modelisation of an idea. So not a product.
You may pay someone for his/shes expertise and time and resources, but you can't pay him/her as you pay a car, a cheese, a house.
Since things change and need regular maintenance so consultancy/time it's not exactly a oneshot thing many try to sell the idea of software as a product before and as a service after.
Those people are really scared and disturbed by the idea of culture, knowledge and free communication because that means in the first place demolish 90% of them, and secondly reduce the remaining 10% from "human-gods" to mere "workers/expert" for hire.
Since our society do not really learn nor remember things well they cyclically find new/old way to keep their model up. In the past with mere ignorance and marketing, after with lock-in, after with total lock-in (cloud/* as a services) even after with controlling production by mere scale diversity (they became too big to have real newcomers that may undermine their throne) and private knowledge (thanks to continuous schools reforms and careful media push).
Sometime they arrive to a point society explode so they have to back up, they loose something but quickly recover. That's the cycle.
- ghaff 8y agoI'd argue that software is a product but it's a product that, especially in its open source form, can be unbundled and--as with other unbundlings such as newspapers--this makes it hard to build successful business models around it. These hybrid license models are a terrible idea for the reasons that Stephen goes into. But the difficulties of selling unbundled bits for large categories of software are very real.
- wslh 8y agoSoftware is a product or a service depending how it is distributed and used.
- CharlesW 8y ago> I'd argue that software is a product… You need much more than just software to build a real product or service. As an example, you can sell LibreOffice[1]. But you're going to need people for sales, support, marketing, finance, legal, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Derivatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Derivatives
- ghaff 8y agoTotally fair. I was using "software" as shorthand for "software product" in the context of commercial licenses for same. You're right of course that product != project and the unbundling of product attributes like the ones you mention from bits that you can freely use is one of the core issues here.