I’m reading Matt Mower‘s and Don Park’s response to Larry Lessig on the OSAF/Future of Software topic. The apocalyptic question has been raised. Will the free software movement eventually kill off all commercial mass market software? My guess is no, but I don’t have an argument why. Here are a few trends:

• Free software has a lot of trouble dealing with Intellectual Property
  • Examples
    • RedHat and MP3 patents
    • DVD encryption
    • Software Patents?
  • Mitigating factors:
    • Popularize a free clone
    • Easier to ignore IP altogether
• Free software hasn’t had enough success at building complex pieces of software (and next to no success at complex software that isn’t cloned from elsewhere)
  • Examples:
    • desktop still isn’t done right
    • Exchange killer?
  • Mitigating Factors:
    • Can do it with enough time and no moving target (office file formats/desktop)
• Microsoft and other commercial software companies have not adequately made the desktop an attractive place to write software for
  • Examples
    • Web site interfaces instead of rich client interfaces
    • Viruses, Worms, security issues
    • Nats
  • Mitigating Factors:
    • Company Line: Soap and .Net Frameworks
    • Being Offline
    • extensibility, privacy, nickled and dimed to death

Hmm… My perspective skew is showing especially in the last one. I should add “Microsoft sucking all the oxygen from the market” based on the different angry blogs I’ve read, but it’s never felt creditable to me.