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[News] Free Software Provably a Viable Business Model

  • Subject: [News] Free Software Provably a Viable Business Model
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:37:22 +0000
  • Followup-to: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • User-agent: KNode/4.3.1
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Does open source undermine innovation?

,----[ Quote ]
| 3) Open source can't create products of 
| equal quality to closed source, because 
| nobody's getting rich. I think that 
| Firefox, Linux and MySQL users would 
| disagree with this, as would I. It's true 
| that many open source project never achieve 
| professional-quality polish, but that's 
| mostly an issue of poor project management 
| and leadership. I think you only have to 
| look at the work HappyKillmore did on the 
| ArduPilot configuration utility, or how 
| Mike Black improved our GCS to see this: 
| I'd argue that both are better than any of 
| the ground station and configuration 
| utilities from the commercial players in 
| our space (and some, including Flexipilot, 
| don't have groundstations at all). Note 
| that these contributions were made not 
| because someone was getting paid, but 
| because the contributors had their own 
| reasons to want better software. And 
| because we set an open source standard, 
| they chose to share their work so that 
| others could build on it.
| 
| So, to sum up: I understand why commercial 
| developers dislike the entry of an open 
| source project into their market and hope 
| it will fail. But the trend lines are clear 
| on this one: open source is here to stay 
| and is spreading, mostly because it leads 
| to more, cheaper products faster. 
| ArduPilot, for example. went from concept 
| to maturity (with the 2.5 code, now in the 
| hands of beta testers) in a year, including 
| a full suite of supporting tools. There is 
| no commercial autopilot that has come close 
| to that speed of development. And as the 
| DIY Drones community grows and our tools of 
| group development improve, we are extending 
| that to a host of new products created by 
| the members here. To hire this many 
| engineers would be ruinous, but by creating 
| a community of shared interest and a 
| culture of collaboration, we can do so at 
| almost no cost at all. It's really quite 
| magical.
`----

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/does-open-source-undermine

Turn Your Blog Into a Book With BlogBooker

,----[ Quote ]
| Built with open source tools, Blogbooker 
| culls all the posts from your WordPress, 
| Blogger, or LiveJournal blog and generates 
| a high-quality PDF that you can print or 
| send to a Publish On Demand (POD) publisher 
| like Lulu or Cafe Press. Alternatively, you 
| can print your book with a laser or inkjet 
| printer, design a cover, then have it bound 
| for you at a local bookbinder.
`----

http://ostatic.com/blog/turn-your-blog-into-a-book-with-blogbooker


Recent:

FOSS use and development also can be compared to bees

,----[ Quote ]
| After a few days of cleaning, bees will take on
| other hive chores like feeding larvae and
| grooming the queen, taking pollen, water and
| nectar from foraging bees and placing it where
| needed.
|
| When the new FOSS user gets beyond the 'feeling
| out' stage, they begin to identify areas that
| need improvement or finding alternatives.They
| will post specific questions on forums asking
| "how to.." and generally set about the task of
| 'tweaking' their software or app.
|
| After a few weeks of housekeeping duty, bees
| are pretty much fully developed now in terms of
| everything from flying to stinging. They now
| become ( usually) guard bees, inspecting every
| bee that comes into the hive to be sure it
| belongs and warding off any potential threats
| to the colony.
`----

http://linuxgeeksunited.blogspot.com/2009/10/foss-use-and-development-also-can-be.html
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