On Sunday 08 October 2006 23:26, Rony wrote: > Dinesh Shah wrote: > > There are large number of businesses / developers / students who > > do have this question - "If I give away my source code, how will > > I make money". > > If I own a software company, how do I make money if my software is > OSS and anyone can compile the code and sell copies of the same > without I getting any share of it? Is too much freedom dangerous?
Dont even think of a bussiness if your bussines is so trivial that somebody can copy your bussiness. Think of a shop with some goods. If some of the goods are stolen and sold your bussiness does not collapse. It will have a set back, which u mitigate by things like insurance. Now think of a shop with just one single diamond. Your risk is extremely high. Mitigating your business against collapse from robbery would be phenomenally high. And would keep climbing. The more successfull the business (based on single diamond metaphor) the more would be the attacks, risk and cost of doing business. It's only a matter of time before it collapses. Otoh if u were doing business with libre software, the money that u would spend on buying bigger locks could be used for adding value to your customers ROI - which the big lock does not. The value add has to be given to the customer, not to your competitor. But wait. what if i gave it to the competitor and he uses it with his customer. I walk up to his customer and point out my copyright. A savvy customer would immediately understand your strength. The above is a very simplistic view. Writing new software is "trivial" making it work is devilishly complex and so expensive that even the worlds richest software company cant get it to work a full two years after the announced launch. So if u published your code the rest of the world does all the grunt work of testing, debugging and adding great features. Can u imagine the likes of Philip Tellis or Kenneth Laversen or Donald Becker or Damein Sandras on your "team"?. God u are miles ahead in the race with these guys on your side. This is what sells - not big lock on trivial software and brain dead bussiness model. -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
