[Ilugc] [Commercial][Cross-post] FOSS Yellow Pages; List Your Firm
- From: swapnil.bhartiya@xxxxxxxxx (Swapnil Bhartiya)
- Date: Sat May 8 17:12:57 2010
The commonly understood FOSS business model : You write software and
release under FOSS licence. Charge customers for distribution costs,
Consulting, Training and Support.
FOSS Yellow Pages service you are building simply uses a commercial
business model where you create a network of buyers and sellers. Then
you try to monetise the traffic (eyeballs). You are using FOSS users /
companies as the traffic.
I did not know there was FOSS vs Commercial. FOSS doesn't mean programming
or working for free of cost. I also agree with that.
In Yellow Pages, the nature of 'product' is different from packaged
software. It is a service. There is no code base -- its database and
content. Mukware already releases all its content under CCL3.0 unported --
so we are releasing our content (product) under the Free Software
philosophy. In FOSS Yellow Pages, the community/readers will have
*unrestricted* access to the database, that is our promise. By unrestricted
I mean -- you won't have to pay or sign-up or register to access the
database.
However, companies who do business and make profit may not mind to get
listed. Even if you are running a company you would rather choose a paid
service than a free one.
Skepticism is good but don't say we are 'using' FOSS users. There is no
usage here as such.
I hope I have made my point clear. By the way Katonda.com has no FOSS angle
still we do a lot of advocacy stories and release all our content under CCL.
Swapnil
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