From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Jul 30 21:31:38 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from lariat.lariat.org (lariat.lariat.org [206.100.185.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 553691524B for ; Fri, 30 Jul 1999 21:31:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: from mustang (IDENT:ppp0.lariat.org@lariat.lariat.org [206.100.185.2]) by lariat.lariat.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA08684; Fri, 30 Jul 1999 22:30:56 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.19990730222252.040353c0@localhost> X-Sender: brett@localhost X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 22:30:45 -0600 To: "David Schwartz" , "Norm Jacobowitz" , From: Brett Glass Subject: RE: Cooperative Funding of Development In-Reply-To: <000801bedb0b$54637540$021d85d1@youwant.to> References: <4.2.0.58.19990730202201.040563c0@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org 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