Trygve Reenskaug <trygver at ifi.uio.no> wrote:

> <seriously>
> It seems to me that the greatest challenge to the SW industry today is to 
> find a business model that makes money on superior products.
Absolutely. Just what are people willing (or even able) to pay for?
Years ago at PPS we used to (half) joke that if Smalltalk didn't make us
money we should deal drugs or run a porn website. Now Wired tells us
the latter is no longer profitable (for most) and the former is run by
very nasty people. So what can we do to make money from software? M$ &
Oracle seem to be about the only companies doing well. I'd rather not
do business like M$.

In a different sphere Amory Lovins argues quite persuasively that
payment for service is the smarter choice - don't buy an air
conditioner and a service contract, buy an air quality service. I
suppose one could claim that the webservices approach aims for this.
The problem is that a services approach requires a guarantee of
continuity and level of service, which seems a difficult thing for any
individual or small company to offer.

Personally, I think I should get a huge grant from an arts council for
peformance art :-)

tim
--
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
APATHY ERROR:  Don't bother striking any key.