Get Your Software for Free in Two Clicks ; Downloading Packages for Nothing Can Make You Big Net Gains, Says David Prosser
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By David Prosser  What does it cost to set yourself up at home with a decent computer, internet and e-mail access, plus all the software you'll need? Buy your computer from a mainstream retailer and you'll pay pounds 1,000 or more.
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A small publisher of college textbooks plans to offer free electronic textbooks to students. The catch? Ads are inserted within the text.
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A little shopping around can yield lots of free stock research.
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Software developer Wurld Media has devised a way to bridge the gap between the freewheeling peer to peer downloads community and the music companies who would like to be paid.
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The Story: What?s in a name? Back in the days of the Gingrich revolution, the nastiest label you could pin on a politician was ?liberal.? And now that open source has become an essential technology, the quickest way to get a rise out of an open source executive (and to get flamed on dozens of blogs) is to say his or her company is ?commercial.?[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    No matter what you call them, open source companies have been steadily integrating parts of the hated commercial software subscription model into their business. First it was support, and now it is software access. Say it ain?t so, Linus.MySQL, for example, will charge users of its enterprise edition to use the code, not just for support as has been the traditional open source business model. ?We are looking for ways to extend our offerings in a way that can be monetized,? bluntly says Kaj Arno, the company?s VP for community.Chander Kant, founder of the open source storage software company Zmanda, is likewise frank about the need to drive revenue. Speaking of the open source community as a whole, he says, ?We are not a charity. We need to monetize.?Recognizing that charging to use open source software flies in the face of the original open source premise of freely sharable code open to everyone, Arno is quick to note that the paid version of Workbench has code and features not found in the free version ? and that the free version ?is not crippled.? Arno calls the move an experiment, and acknowledges that MySQL needs to move carefully to avoid upsetting the often quick-tempered open source community.Is this a trend? Red Monk analyst Stephen O?Grady says it is: ?Ultimately when you look at a high-profile firm like MySQL embracing it, it?s difficult to conclude anything else.?InfoWorld blogger (and IBM employee) Savio Rodrigues notes another example. In a recent blog post, he looked at changes to JBoss since it was purchased by Red Hat Software and concluded: ?The Fedora/JBoss subscription is just like the software subscription business model that commercial software vendors have been using for decades.?Does that mean a company that adopts the usage-based pricing model isn?t really open-source? That?s an interesting point, since as Zmanda?s Kant acknowledges, ?the litmus test of open source is control of the code.? Open source software delivered through appliances keeps the access ? and thus control ? away from users, he notes. But code binaries distributed as software remain open to their users ? for now, at least.The Bottom Line: Have MySQL and Red Hat run away from the principles of open source? Who cares. The real point is that the open source business model is evolving away from the ?free? model and toward an alternative development approach for commercial software. If you adopted open source due to its cost, you may not save as much as you thought. If you adopted open source for the access to source code or the community-supported development approach that is supposed to result in better software, it?s not yet clear if the greater commercialization will enhance those aspects or drive away the true believers and make open source no different than the old-fashioned commercial offerings.Complete list of 2007 underreported stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
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When you're not inclined to give your product away for free, make your customers believe they're getting something for nothing.
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The spam-blocking feature of Trend Micro&#39;s package may be more immediately useful, because bandwidth is money. Software that can prevent unwanted messages from coming through will save users cash.
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The software maker has released a downloadable version of its financial package for consumers.
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Whether you've got a home network, small network, enterprise network or anything in between, these 10 freebies can make it more secure, run better and easier to manage. They're useful, easy to learn ... and you certainly can't beat free.
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ThinkFree's got happy users, a familiar interface, hooks into the blazing Web 2.0 space, and a price point far below its main competitor. But if your main competitor is Microsoft Office, all those advantages count for less market share than you'd think.
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By its very nature, open-source software would appear to run counter to the goals of venture capitalists. Not only is it distributed and developed for free by a loose-knit group of techies from around the
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Switiching to open source software could save Â£600 million, says the shadow chancellor.
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The FreeiPods.com website looks as phony as a $3 bill. In fact, it's at the forefront of performance-based marketing, as advertisers discover it's more effective to spend $50 million on gifts than to blow the cash on TV ads. By Leander Kahney.
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There's no such thing as a free lunch. And soon, there may be no such thing as an ad-free RSS feed, either, as publishers add advertisements to their feeds in hopes of making money through the popular content-aggregating technology. By Cyrus Farivar.
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Richard Stallman from the FSF, Ray Saunders from the World Scout Bureau and the author discuss the connections between free software and Scouting philosophies.
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Two simple ideas that can make you money.
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Whereas most of todayâs software tools follow the âbigger is betterâ philosophy, Savvysoftâs (Profile, Products, Articles) TurboExcel proves the adage that great things really do come in small packages.