~ Personal computers mostly came about because hobbyists built things that were cool for themselves, and then shared with others. Does that affect quality of a product? When a person has a passion for a particular topic, and builds for themselves, does the product end up better?
~ Having the drive to create these cool things is more productive than a standard 9 to 5. Getting people to work harder than the 40 hours per week isn't easy if they don't really like what they're making.
~ It's a shame that personal computers are becoming more and more difficult to open up to see the hardware. Laptops usually use unusual screws now. Big transition from when everyone had to build their computer themselves.
~ It's interesting that during the start of the personal computers, frequently the inventor or first to commercialize something rarely ended up making the most money from it. I guess it seems tough for a company to tell where a technology needs to go when it's first created.
~ It's also disappointing to see in negotiations that one party often comes out a clear winner. Although it's not always the company with the lawyers that wins. Microsoft was able to sell their OS to everyone after IBM released their PC, while the IBM clones took over the PC market.
~ Strange that a couple of companies ended up creating cult followings from this. And that those followings are still around 40 years later. (Although no one admits to being a fan of Microsoft anymore.)
~ It's really cool that so many companies realized how big the internet would become as soon as it started. That's a lot like social media right now, as much as I hate to admit it (I'm not a fan of social media at all).
~ It's odd that Apple and Microsoft became such big rivals when they only partially marketed in the same space. Microsoft did Windows and other software, while Apple made complete products. It seemed at the time that Microsoft made the more successful business decision, because they were able to sell their OS and software to so many people, and now with the smartphone market the story kind of repeats itself: Apple held on to the market share for a while, but they're no longer even the top hardware manufacturer of smartphones. (I word it that way because in OS market share they lost ground to all the different android phones pretty quickly, but as the only iOS phone they kept hardware manufacturing market share a bit longer)
~ Having the right vision of where the future tech will go can make you a lot of money. Xerox missed out on a lot of stuff when they let Apple see their ideas for a GUI. If their management had been thinking more forward, Xerox may have had a larger part in the PC revolution.
~ When you treat your user-base as debuggers, do you owe them compensation?
~ On the topic of compensation, how do you get people to create products that are targeted towards non-developers? No users will be able to help create the product, so you have to pay developers to do it. But I guess users that are non-developers are probably more likely to need support, so maybe the income can come from there.
~ That means the whole idea of open source is strangely complete. When the users are developers, there's a lot of free work on it, and a good product can be made with all the extra testers. When the users are non-developers, hopefully they'll pay for support.
~ I initially figured that the free software movement was wrong, the creator should be able to determine who, if anyone, can ever see the code that was created. But I kind of agree with them now. When someone purchases software, they should have the right to be able to look over the code and make sure it won't do anything that wasn't advertised. Preventing the user from making sure that's the case is an ethical issue.
~ Maybe the software should always be open for people to view, but it could be copyrighted. A user could change it, but only for non-commercial purposes. I can't really see how full free access is an ethical right. You should be able to make money off your creation, if other people support your app, you can't make any money off of it.
~ And the leaders of the free software movement really need to stop using the word free. That's just way too ingrained as meaning no cost, it's confusing even after clarification.
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