On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Swapnil Bhartiya <swapnil.bhart...@gmail.com > wrote:
> The commonly understood FOSS business model : You write software and >> release under FOSS licence. Charge customers for distribution costs, >> Consulting, Training and Support. >> >> FOSS Yellow Pages service you are building simply uses a commercial >> business model where you create a network of buyers and sellers. Then >> you try to monetise the traffic (eyeballs). You are using FOSS users / >> companies as the traffic. >> > > I did not know there was FOSS vs Commercial. FOSS doesn't mean programming > or working for free of cost. I also agree with that. > > In Yellow Pages, the nature of 'product' is different from packaged > software. It is a service. There is no code base -- its database and > content. Mukware already releases all its content under CCL3.0 unported -- > so we are releasing our content (product) under the Free Software > philosophy. In FOSS Yellow Pages, the community/readers will have > *unrestricted* access to the database, that is our promise. By unrestricted > I mean -- you won't have to pay or sign-up or register to access the > database. > > However, companies who do business and make profit may not mind to get > listed. Even if you are running a company you would rather choose a paid > service than a free one. > > Skepticism is good but don't say we are 'using' FOSS users. There is no > usage here as such. > > I hope I have made my point clear. By the way Katonda.com has no FOSS angle > still we do a lot of advocacy stories and release all our content under CCL. > > Swapnil > One more point. Please do not spread information that Free Software or Open Source doesn't have any commercial angle. This is a dangerous point of view which makes our fight even harder. Open Source was coined as an alternative to Free Software and now there is FOSS. The entire exercise was to convince enterprises that Free Software or Open Source doesn't mean non-commercial or profit-less business model. The fight is against vendor-locks, restriction to code and a health sharing based society. By the way the Subject line of this mail chain has [commercial] in it. FOSS is a healthy, ethical business model. By sending out messages like FOSS vs Commercial or FOSS is against commercial gain is damaging the entire FOSS movement. Please do not do that. -- Swapnil Bhartiya ------------------- KALKION.COM http://kalkion.com India's Major Science Fiction Website running on FOSS tools! _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
