Re:Why is selling software so weird?
by marcosdumay on Thursday April 14, 2022 @11:29AM
(#31028225)
> from the academic biotech sector
Yes, academics will rewrite proprietary software. Collaborating is what they do, and Free Software is done basically the same way they do everything. They would rewrite it if it was free too.
Business will have a harder time doing the same.
Re:Why is selling software so weird?
by pwr-electronics on Thursday April 14, 2022 @12:45PM
(#31029482)
The business opportunity is in software that's inseparable from the hardware. Academics won't work on that because they don't do product development.
Coming from that exact same domain. I still see a little risk: I used to use a specialized image analysis software for microscopy coming with the instrument and the software was hitting its limits mainly because it was running locally. We started using third party software or even developed our own software and were going to buy fewer license from the instrument manufacturer.
Of course instrument controls waa a thing, but also this: if not integrated these instruments are getting harder to sell.
What I am trying to say is that even these software business model tied to the instruments are no a guarantee anymore.
The stand-alone software for DNA analysis has been mostly replaced by free open-source Python packages written by researchers who didn't want to pay the high fees or deal with things like distributing HASP dongles etc.
On the other hand, writing the software that comes packaged with expensive instrumentation, and that's optimized for that instrumentation, remains a viable business. The cost is bundled into the overall cost of the instrumentation setup. A research group/university that buys such instrumentation expects it to be supported over time, and so that's where low volume high end software production is not really going to change. The software is so closely integrated with the hardware, and software failure has such serious consequences, that there's no way FOSS could ever work in that situation. This is as you say a more business-to-business situation.