Re: OSS and getting money for it (was: [tlug] Re: Why Vista Sucks)

["Josh Glover" <jmglov@example.com>]

On 02/04/2008, Attila Kinali <attila@example.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:38:31 +0900
>
> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com> wrote:
>
>  > I assure you, it is.  Remember, from the owner's purely selfish point
>  > of view, it's just an asset, and anything that makes giving away IP
>  > "not much of a problem" would do the same thing for your house.  Would
>  > you give that away?
>
>  So, to make OSS comercialy success full one has to make the
>  giving away part an economic advantage... which might be very
>  hard.

But this surely only applies when you are selling the code, not a
service, right Steve? What about the Google / Amazon model where you
are selling a service, so most of the code contains no IP of value to
you?

Google won't open source their core search and advertising stuff, and
we (Amazon) won't open source our retail business code, but both
companies are happy to open source lots of stuff. For example, Amazon
has made lots of contributions to Mason, including employing its
creator for a few years and paying him to work on Mason (amongst other
things).

> I don't know whether i'm very good (i actually don't think so),
>  but my hobbies always motivate me more than my work. :-)

But the market has failed in this case because the features you will
develop as a hobby are not the same ones (necessarily) that the market
demands.

Am I on the right track, Steve.

Economics-otaku-ni-narita-ly yr's,
Josh