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Re:I Think Your App Should Be Free by tjr on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @12:53PM (#3071778)
This whole analogy is kind of weak. Hiring a plumber to come in and do a job on your sink is similar to hiring a session musician to come in and lay down a bass track on your recording, and not very similar to buying an album.

Buying an album from a musician is similar to buying a book about plumbing that a plumber wrote, and I imagine that most such plumber-writers would indeed have interest in protecting their copyright on their books.

These are entirely different business models, and we software engineers should understand them immediately. It's the difference between running a consulting business and running a product business.

Re:I Think Your App Should Be Free by toyg on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @04:41PM (#3072828)
No, you are twisting the analogy, but that's irrelevant.

The problem here is that a "product business" in the online world is hardly sustainable, because enforcing artificial scarcity of your product is basically impossible. Which is why the entire software industry is quickly shifting to SaaS models and consulting as fast as they can. The music business should do the same and stop whining.