At Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:52:43 -0700 (MST), Justin Findlay wrote: > > This is an interesting article, though he is quite wrong. The business > model for open source software companies is ridiculously simple, which is > why so few people really understand it. > > First of all, software, especially OSS, is not designed to be static and > completed all at once for the first release, and we are a very long way > from completely satisfying the demand of new and better software. Given > this practically limitless need for new and improved software, not to > mention the need for bug patching and support, there is obviously > extensive, sustainable revenue available for such service, and I know at > least Matthew Suzlik knows this. If your software is valuable, someone > will pay you to maintain/develop it.
The problem is ensuring that you get paid for the maintenance and support that you give for this Free software. Redhat finally had to get tough and cut off all support for anyone that didn't buy a license for their Free software. Pretty weird, selling licenses for free software, but how else do you guarantee payment for your services if you are a software only company? I think that is what everyone is trying to figure out, especially for consumer software. Sure Redhat, MySQL, Collab, and others can make money working with businesses, but who's going to cater open source software to my sister or my dad? Mandrake is trying, and I think they are doing a pretty good job, but I have no motivation to pay them for their work, other than an occasional feeling of pity or guilt. Maybe my sister would buy a support contract, but more than likely she'd come to me. Maybe if Dell and/or HP started pumping out PC's preinstalled with Linux and a support contract included in the price of the PC then Mandrake (and other consumer focused companies) could make some money... > Why did AT&T, a software _consumer_, commission UNIX and sponsor the > development of the C and C++ programming languages? IBM pours millions of > dollars into Linux because IBM has perpetual need for a new and better > Linux, and they also know that if they don't pay for it, it is not > guaranteed to be developed, at least not at the rate for which they can > afford. Why does IBM do this even though all of their expensive work is > up on display and available gratis at kernel.org? For that very reason. > Many people intelligent enough to hack through it are capable of > discovering or fixing problems unseen by IBM's commission. Therefore, IBM > not only gets what they want by paying for it, but also garners gratis > improvement and value from other, perhaps similar, parties. And then they sell hardware and services to others in order to make money, easy for them. > > The gratis in free software flows both ways. Overall, I agree with Andrew that Stallman doesn't try to make a business case for Free software at all. Maybe I'm wrong, but he does seems to have a very socialist ideal about it. This zdnet article seemed to be an awkward one, trying to refute some point that Stallman wasn't even trying to make. Bryan ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
