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[News] Free Software Defended as Business Model

  • Subject: [News] Free Software Defended as Business Model
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 12:59:05 +0000
  • Followup-to: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • User-agent: KNode/4.3.1
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The Open-Source Business: Whatâs Tomorrowâs Dominance Worth Today?

,----[ Quote ]
| A large handful of major open-source 
| companies have been acquired for anywhere 
| from 20 to 500 times their trailing 
| revenues â astronomically high compared to 
| other acquisition price ranges.  Hereâs 
| the key:  Not one major open-source 
| acquisition has ever been initiated by the 
| proprietary incumbent. Instead they were 
| acquired by a company in an adjacency 
| (e.g., Xen by Citrix, SpringSource by 
| VMWare, MySQL by Sun, JBoss by Red Hat, 
| etc.)
`----

http://kellyherrell.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/the-open-source-business-whats-tomorrows-dominance-worth-today/

Why the NY Times is Wrong about Open Source

,----[ Quote ]
| For example, the Linux operating system is 
| the most serious competitor to Microsoftâs 
| operating system business. The fact that 
| it is supported by IBM, Intel and other 
| large companies is a further testament to 
| its competitiveness and value.
`----

http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=312

Do Open Source and Venture Capital Mix?

,----[ Quote ]
| The short answer is in fact a question: 
| âWhy not?â Or more pertinently, we should 
| be asking why we are asking this question 
| at all.
`----

http://nelsonko.com/2009/12/01/do-open-source-and-venture-capital-mix/


Recent:

Is Open Source as a Model for Business Really That Elusive?

,----[ Quote ]
| Data is the next great revenue frontier, in
| my view. And Iâve long argued that open
| source is intrinsically differentiated in
| its ability to generate data, given its
| distribution and adoption advantages. Some
| will undoubtedly argue that privacy
| concerns will prohibit this practice: I am
| not one of those people. First because open
| source projects are already collecting data
| (Debian, Eclipse, NetBeans, Ubuntu, etc),
| but more because the data has value â
| potentially immense value â to users.
`----

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2009/11/30/open-source-model/


11 open source business models

,----[ Quote ]
| Telling people to pay you and go away worked
| for an amazingly long time. It sounds like it
| shouldnât. It sounds a bit like theft. But
| software is a miracle, and for decades EULA
| Ware was the only model there was.
|
| Open source companies, on the other hand, they
| have to use their imagination.
`----

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=5371


Keep the cash: think open source

,----[ Quote ]
| Open source has come a long way since Linux,
| with the advent of software programs in many
| universities. There are open source and
| freeware programs available for everything
| from antivirus software to media players. Open
| source differs from freeware in that the code
| is freely available and can be modified under
| certain conditions, while freeware code is
| not.
|
| In theory, users could replace most of
| their purchased software with open source
| software. For example, you can use Songbird
| as a music player, OpenOffice.org in place
| of Microsoft Office, Gimp to replace
| Photoshop, and AVG as antivirus. But these
| substitutions are not yet commonplace.
`----

http://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2009/12/01/Features/Keep-The.Cash.Think.Open.Source-3842129.shtml


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


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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