Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 04:05:56 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD direction/Damonnews article Message-ID: <15140.35316.140495.9735@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <p05100304b749db542efa@[194.78.241.123]> References: <20010604200851.A65559@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <3.0.6.32.20010608140211.00ae4470@mail85.pair.com> <3.0.6.32.20010608153126.00f7d7e0@mail85.pair.com> <3B21407C.2B9E8D6D@pitt.edu> <p05100304b749db542efa@[194.78.241.123]>
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Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> types: > At 5:15 PM -0400 6/8/01, Pedro F. Giffuni wrote: > The company does what companies do well -- spend money doing > initial development. It lets the community do what communities do > well -- supporting existing products with a reduced cost by trading > volunteer effort for money. > > This is the open source model that I believe actually works. While I agree that that model can work, your description is missing one important detail - where's the corporate income coming from after they open-source the product? Ars Digita and Digital Creations both followed this model, having open-sourced software they developed as consulting firms. Their income is still coming from consulting. Digital Creations seems to be doing just fine. Ars Digita was doing fine until it went through a hostile management takeover, after which the MBAs started firing the developers - leading to the company having problems. Do you have examples of companies that follow this basic model with a different income source? The other open source model that have evidence of a actually working is bundling open-sourced software with proprietary hardware. There's little or no money in the open-sourced software, but development and maintenance gets covered by the costs affiliated with the hardware. Tivo is doing this. It's not clear they are going to survive the arrival of MicroSoft as competition, but their basic model seems to be working fine. Thanx, <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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