Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 22:30:45 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com>, "Norm Jacobowitz" <normj@aa.net>, <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Cooperative Funding of Development Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19990730222252.040353c0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <000801bedb0b$54637540$021d85d1@youwant.to> References: <4.2.0.58.19990730202201.040563c0@localhost>
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At 09:15 PM 7/30/99 -0700, David Schwartz wrote: > Of course, this could only affect a company that was subsidizing the >unprofitable development of one product with the proceeds of another. Not true. Destroy a revenue stream, and unless the company lets a whole bunch of people go and downsizes, it can be in serious trouble. And if it acts ethically and continues to support its existing users, this will likely be sufficient to produce a big loss. The fact is that subsidizing the development of open source software -- particularly GPLed software -- in an effort to destroy a market and hurt a company can be a very dangerous weapon. Microsoft did something similar to Quarterdeck in the late 80's, with software that wasn't open source but WAS free. To ensure that DESQview could not compete with Windows 3.0, Microsoft made Windows incompatible with Quarterdeck's QEMM memory manager and at the same time began to give away its own memory manager for free. DESQview was not unprofitable, but the loss of the revenue stream from QEMM -- the company's best seller -- threw the company into turmoil and sapped its marketing budget. Quarterdeck never recovered. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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