* [9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing @ 2000-09-26 9:14 Alexander L 2000-09-26 13:28 ` [9fans] " Christopher Browne [not found] ` <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz> 0 siblings, 2 replies; 4+ messages in thread From: Alexander L @ 2000-09-26 9:14 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans Hi guys, I'm wondering something, how does a company earn $ with their software licensed under open source? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* [9fans] Re: Plan 9 with open source licensing 2000-09-26 9:14 [9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing Alexander L @ 2000-09-26 13:28 ` Christopher Browne [not found] ` <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz> 1 sibling, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread From: Christopher Browne @ 2000-09-26 13:28 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
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* Re: [9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing [not found] ` <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz> @ 2000-09-26 16:09 ` Tom Duff 2000-09-27 8:53 ` Christopher Browne 0 siblings, 1 reply; 4+ messages in thread From: Tom Duff @ 2000-09-26 16:09 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans 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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing 2000-09-26 16:09 ` [9fans] " Tom Duff @ 2000-09-27 8:53 ` Christopher Browne 0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread From: Christopher Browne @ 2000-09-27 8:53 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans 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. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2000-09-27 8:53 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 4+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2000-09-26 9:14 [9fans] Plan 9 with open source licensing Alexander L 2000-09-26 13:28 ` [9fans] " Christopher Browne [not found] ` <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz> 2000-09-26 16:09 ` [9fans] " Tom Duff 2000-09-27 8:53 ` Christopher Browne
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