[9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing

[9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing

[Alexander L]

Hi guys,

I'm wondering something, how does a company earn $ with their software
licensed under open source?

[9fans] Re: Plan 9 with open source licensing

[Christopher Browne]

In our last episode (Tue, 26 Sep 2000 09:14:13 GMT),
the artist formerly known as Alexander L said:
>I'm wondering something, how does a company earn $ with their software
>licensed under open source?

Generally by virtue of being in business to sell something else.

A main virtue of "open source" is _not_ the profitability of it, but
rather the cost savings that come from the fact that your company
built some "open source" software, and makes use of a much larger
body that others have built.
-- 
cbbrowne@hex.net - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/>
"I visited  a company  that was doing  programming in BASIC  in Panama
City and I asked them if they resented that the BASIC keywords were in
English.   The answer  was:  ``Do  you resent  that  the keywords  for
control of actions in music are in Italian?''"  -- Kent M Pitman

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing

[Tom Duff]

On Sep 26,  9:14am, Alexander L wrote:
> Subject: [9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing
> Hi guys,
>
> I'm wondering something, how does a company earn $ with their software
> licensed under open source?

Support is traditional.  Cygnus was the pioneer
in this field.

Accessorizing, widget frosting, loss leaders,
according to http://www.opensource.org/for-suits.html

These all amount to using the software as a tease to
sell something else -- not very different from the
drug dealer's strategy (the first one's free...)

IBM did all of these in the 1960s (uhh, I don't think
they ever sold drugs), and never gets any credit.

-- 
Tom Duff.  Never express yourself more clearly than you think.

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing

[Christopher Browne]

In our last episode (Tue, 26 Sep 2000 17:17:03 GMT),
the artist formerly known as Tom Duff said:
>On Sep 26,  9:14am, Alexander L wrote:
>> Subject: [9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> I'm wondering something, how does a company earn $ with their software
>> licensed under open source?
>
>Support is traditional.  Cygnus was the pioneer
>in this field.
>
>Accessorizing, widget frosting, loss leaders,
>according to http://www.opensource.org/for-suits.html
>
>These all amount to using the software as a tease to
>sell something else -- not very different from the
>drug dealer's strategy (the first one's free...)
>
>IBM did all of these in the 1960s (uhh, I don't think
>they ever sold drugs), and never gets any credit.

There was an interesting discussion of this at the Atlanta Linux
Symposium 2 years ago under the moniker "The Scorched Earth Strategy."

Software is often not actually a profit centre, and for many companies
_doesn't_ represent something they receive a lot of money for.

If it turns out that a software system that a company _expected_ to
make money from _doesn't_ turn out to be profitable, for whatever
reason, they might use an "open source" strategy to essentially
"scorch" the earth behind them.  If they can't make money of this
software, it may be good for business if they can prevent anyone else
from doing so either.  I think Mozilla falls into this category...
-- 
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@" "ntlug.org")
<http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
Strong language gets results.  "The reloader is completely broken in
242" will open a lot more eyes than "The reloader doesn't load files
with intermixed spaces, asterisks, and <'s in their names that are
bigger than 64K".  You can always say the latter in a later paragraph.
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