On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 13:47 +0100, Ian Lynch wrote: > On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 13:25 +0100, Dave Crossland wrote: > > On 21/05/07, Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > But how do the VCs get their money back? > > > > High end development services, mainly porting, is big business. > > > > "Selling ... "porting Gnash to your device"." > > - http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash/2007-03/msg00000.html > > > But if anyone can do it, where is their competitive advantage to come > from? I can see that you can set up a service company but usually VCs > don't invest unless there is clear protection from competition at least > for enough time for them to recoup their investment. I'm not saying its > not commercially viable, just that it seems like an unusual investment > for a VC to make.
Historically, VC-funded businesses working on free software haven't been terribly successful, but I have no idea how successful (or not) they are compared to VC-funded businesses in general. In terms of competition, though, in the software business such things are sometimes naturally limited by time - VCs are usually after an exit in the medium-term, and they may be thinking that this kind of business has a life span of a similar term. After all, in ten year's time, we'll likely have something completely different to Flash around. Cheers, Alex. _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
