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Vistasource In Trouble
starseeker writes: "It looks like the financial picture is not good for Applix - "the company intends to report VistaSource as a discontinued operation in its audited financial statements." The financial report is online.
What happens to Applixware Office now?" For the backstory: Vistasource is the division of Applix - we've talked about this before. Still with the various K* options, the G* options, and OpenOffice the competition is tough - not to mention Abiword and all the others.
I don't know.. I'm one of those people who are interested in Linux and Open Source in general and appreciate the availability of source code (and may even contribute once in a while) but who don't see it as a silver bullet suitable for everything. I for one have never really believed that open source is a good business model and seeing all kinds of "open source companies" (that is, companies that have an open source related business model) fail only confirms my belief.
While some older companies like IBM might have some use of open source (their ventures into Apache and use of Linux for example), I see it largely as a PR manouver.
I recently read The Cluetrain Manifesto (www.cluetrain.com) and some of the stuff really hit me while a large part didn't. I mean, yeah, I believe companies should have conversations with the market, like open source does, and yeah, I believe in subverting hierarchy, something open source accomplishes, and yes, companies don't speak in a human voice, which open source does, but businesses need to keep secrets and everything can't and shouldn't be open.
The problem is that people (and therefore companies) don't have a lot of self confidence.. When they have stumbled upon some working piece of code that they refine into a product, they fear that if it got out into the open, their competitor would just reap the benefits of their hard labour and sell it for cheaper. Maybe their fear is rightly founded too! In any case, the result is that they hide the code as well as they can and try to make as much money from it as possible until the others "figure it out". The worst possible thing that could happen, they think, is if the competitor would get their secret!
People (and therefore also companies) are greedy and interested in making money. They do whatever gets them the most money - and preferably, gets them a lot of money soon! Open Source is not a great way to make a lot of money.
It's a question of values really.. It is very rooted into us people in the western world that money is the most important thing. For companies (publicly listed ones especially), money *IS* the most important thing. Whatever we do is determined by how much money that will get us. If we had different values; if we could work for the society, for example, and try to build as good a society as possible, then open source would probably blossom as a business model. Now, I just don't believe in it - not as a business model.. I for one am not surprised at open source businesses failing.
The reality of this market is that, unless you are Microsoft, almost no software product is a long-term money maker. Sooner or later, someone is going to take your market. Either people get stuff "for free" from Microsoft, or they get stuff "for free" from free or open source software efforts (the latter makes a lot more economic sense).
In this mature market, you can't expect to beat Microsoft with a clone of MSOffice and charge for it. If anything is going to beat MSOffice in the market, it will have to be at the very least free, and it probably has to offer some other compelling features as well. Some companies (like Sun and RedHat) still have enough incentive to sponsor those kinds of developments. But Star and Applix were anachronisms, and it is completely unsurprising that they have disappeared.