LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : mtippett@ticons.com.au
  Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 16:37:42 +0930

Re: More Meeting Information

Matt,

Red hat example:
---------------
Everyone talks about the redhat example, which has not yet made
real profits, as far as I can see, and this must be
compared with the thousands of companies making big money out
of closed source model.

Obviously if you make money out of hardware, then you can give
away software for free.
Or if if youget money from applications, you can give the OS
away for free. Redhat does _not_ make that much money out
of the OS, only out of the support, and the copying of it
and distribution on CD etc.

No money from free software:
---------------------------
I think that it's logically obvious that if I write 30,000 lines of
software in 6 months and stick it on the web for free,
and no one sends me money, then I am not going to make a living out of this.
In fact, I'll just end up with heaps of people asking for free advice.

More particularly, it's not attractive to a venture capitalist.

The investment by big companies in Red Hat is like
a grain company investing in a train company -- at the end they
get to use the product.
I think that the linux software cluster survives mostly on
students who work for free, and hobbyists.

Open software, not free software:
--------------------------------
On the other hand, I would agree with you if you said that
the software was open but _not_ free.
A book makes money, even though every word is out in the open.
But you are not allowed to publish it yourself.
The _copyright_ remains with the author/publisher etc.
And that's how to make money.
In a sense, all software is already "open source", if you
think of assembly language as being source.
(That makes sense if you recall the old days before
compilers were invented.)

In other words, I'd argue for the "book publishing" model
of linux-context software development, rather than the
"free beer" or "trade secret" models at opposite ends of the
spectrum.

Meeting procedural suggestion:
-----------------------------
If you want to get something satisfying out of a discussion, I
strongly suggest that you announce and/or negotiate a set of
questions before discussion starts. I.e write the questions up
on a whiteboard. E.g.

1.	Can venture capitalism make profit from open source development?
2.	Can venture capitalism make profit from free software development?
3.	...

Without your permission, I'll copy this to linuxsa.
Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

===============================================
From mtippett@matt.ticons.com.au  Wed Mar 31 16:18:52 1999
From: Matthew Tippett <mtippett@ticons.com.au>
Subject: Re: More Meeting Information
To: akenning@dog.topology.org (Alan Kennington)
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 16:18:45 +0930 (CST)
In-Reply-To: <199903310208.LAA05770@dog.topology.org> from "Alan Kennington" at Mar 31, 99 11:38:55 am
Content-Type: text

> Linux is not necessarily open source.
> In fact, if all linux applications have to be open source, then
> probably linux is doomed to a small future, especially if
> open source becomes free source.

Snip!

Taking this on board.  Venture capital will always be available for
products that are proprietary and closed in nature.  It is absoluletly
independent from the Operating Environment.

The crux of the the issue is that the requirements are that the 
intellectual property must be yours to sell.  With the Open Source 
environment the IP is available for anyone to sell.  It is not
that there is no market, it is that there is no competitive benefit.

Red Hat don't have many IP rights to the software that they have
developed and released under GPL.  And yet within in the environment
they have sold a product which is a collection of products which 
they don't own but have a right to sell.  As a consequence they have
a definite branding in this OSS environment.  They are now beginning to
get venture capital from quite a few Fortune 500 companies.

This sort of thing is what I would like to talk about in the panel.

Looking forward to your reply.

Regards,

Matt

-- 
Check out the LinuxSA web pages at http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
  mail linuxsa-request@linuxsa.org.au with "unsubscribe" as the subject