[Ilugc] Open source + GPL
- From: chennai_bsd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (bsd unix)
- Date: Sun Jun 27 13:40:19 2004
Hi Siva / Others
First of all thanks to everybody.
I will send my final findings to this list for approval, before i publish it.
Back to the points
a. The company saved the money to write
20,000 lines of code from scratch.
Indeed, it is a benefit so that i can save a few months.
b. The 10,000 lines released to the community
is reviewed by other interested developers
and the company gets bug reports and fixes
and improvements.
The trouble starts here, once i release it to the community,
I'am at the receiving end. If my aim is to productize it, it will get a
terrible blow. ( Lost for ever )
Why any body buy it from you when your code ( 10,000 lines ) is available
freely.
The company makes money by supplying the
resultant application and service support.
Since the initial investment was low (20,000
lines of free code), they can price only for
their service and gain a larger market
share.
Again why would any body buy it when it is available freely.
The user can just download it ( 20,000 + The company's 10,000 ) either as
source code or as a product.
The company's competitiveness is lost for ever.
2. Now take a company who is going to take a
free ride on the 30,000 lines of code:
a. The get 30,000 lines of code without
paying a thing.
Indeed Yes
b. They will try to understand the code (to
compete with company 1 above) and package it
to provide their own solution to the market.
Whatever the changes, bug fixes they made,
they release back to the community and
company 1 also gets all of them.
Same problem again, this companmy fixes issues does enhancements and releases
to the communicty again.
Again can be taken free of cost.
What about the enginners who worked on this ? What about thier efforts ?
Again why would anybody buy it from c1 or c2 ?
How the company will survive ?
Inturn how the industry will pick up / generate employment ?
I have seen even developers who contribute to open source in most cases work in
a company and do this in spare time.
Why do they do that ? b'cause there is no proper revenue model in open source.
Assume Microsoft opens up it's code. There will be 100 Windows / Office
variations / distributions appearing for free download.
What will happen to the industry then ?
My view is that opensource model cannot generate employment.
c. Company 1 still has an advantage as the
original author they understand the
application better and provide a better
service.
Now why company 1 will make investment again in the product when there are so
many open source people surging ahead making it better.
Company 1 will do this when it can generate revenue out of the productto
support the enginners / developers. As this won't happen in this model, company
1 is left behind.
The better company wins !
The end user Wins, Both companies will struggle after some time.
If you want an example of company 1 take Red
Hat and have a look at their history.
Company 2 is probably Mandrake.
So, what is the problem?
Can you compare ( revenue wise / employment wise / contribution to the industry
/ foriegn exchange earnigs etc ) Microsoft / Oracle / SAP / Vxworks / Nucleus
etc with
Mandrake and Redhat, MySql, Montavista etc.
You know there are more than 100 companies offering Embedded linux with no one
able to make a good profit.
What Happened to Lineo ?
What happened to Mandrake ( struggling )
Thanks
Kamban
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