On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 15:41 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote: > On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 15:27 +0100, Ian Lynch wrote: > > On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 15:04 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote: > > > 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. > > > > But for an exit they would normally look for a buyer of the business or > > a floatation. If the life of the business is limited so will be its > > attractiveness to a buyer or stock market investors who are looking > > longer term. > > Indeed. I'm just thinking, though, that if they're after the "flash in > embedded devices" type market (which is probably a play requiring much > more than a working Flash plugin),
That I think is more likely.I think most FOSS viable business models are likely to work with the software only being a small part of an overall system or service. > the investment goes in to make a > short-term buck, not to build a long-term business. Making that buck is what is not clear to me. I can't see them making sat 20m in clear profit selling an open source flash player on its own. If it adds value to a disproportionate extent to a different business causing that business to grow to 100 x the size I can see that business being worth a lot. > I understand the point you're making though - are we actually sure Gnash > has got VC funding here? I hadn't seen any announcement that they'd > raised $/€ 10M, let alone that it was venture capital. It could just have had investment eg from some big company with an agenda to kill Adobe or whatever. Its a bit like sun putting development resource into OOo because it saves them paying MSO licenses to M$ as well as giving them a product to sell and to add value to a Solaris desktop etc. Its not because Sun think they'll build up an OOo business and sell it at a big fat profit. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
