On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Druppy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Jun 12, 2008, at 10:34 AM, Bob La Quey wrote: >>> >> >> Selling software = bad business. >> Selling services enabled by software = good business. >> >> > > I'm curious how this would break down in the B2C world as opposed to the B2B > world. Business love service contracts but consumers do not. So let's say > I make an awesome game and I want to see it, how does that work with your > model? Do I sell a service contract to my end user, incase the game breaks? > For online games you can obviously charge for server usage, but what about > single player games? How does a company recoop R&D investments? Let say we > spend $3million and 5 years making a game and release it as open source. > What is stopping a bunch of server farms from running our stuff for free > without ever having spent a dime on R&D and thus being able to sell the > service for much less. > > Maybe I am missing something though.
Keep some of the software as trade secret. Run it only on your servers. This still is likely to mean that you can add a lot of less specialized software to the GPL pool. And equally important you can use a lot of FOSS and concentrate your $3 Million on what is your real value add. I suppose one could come up with a FOSS license that required the viral propagation of adds ;-( then get paid per click. BobLQ "Not thinking much about games though." -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
