Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: open source == $0.00?
Author: Eric Kidd Posted: 8/27/1999; 12:58:11 PM Topic: GIFs get expensive Msg #: 10147 (In response to 10143) Prev/Next: 10146 / 10148
(I'm speaking for myself, not for UserLand.)This continues to puzzle me... open-source advocates emphasize that their software DOESN'T have to be free-as-in-beer, yet the most common case seems to be that open-source software is given away free of charge.
The guys over at Digital Creations had a great explanation of this. One of them said, "Our business model isn't about the golden eggs. It's about the goose who lays the golden eggs."
Finished software is the golden egg in this methaphor. Your team of programmers is the goose. An open source business model isn't about selling eggs. It's about selling the services of the goose.
For example, consider Cygnus. They're a profitable company, and they write over half of all the new code in GCC. GCC is the standard Linux compiler, and anybody can make a copy of it. Cygnus earns their money from businesses (who need support) and chip vendors (who need a compiler to run on their chips). If you make a microprocessor, you can pay Cygnus to port GCC. Of course, you could ignore Cygnus and do all the work yourself, but that costs money, too.
Open source software is usually available at zero cost because anyone can make a copy. Now, you could sell a regular product, and provide source code to your customers. Technically, that's not open source, but it's still a nice thing to do. Frontier, for example, is not open source, but it comes with tons of UserTalk source code.
Cheers,
Eric
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