Using Closed Standards To Pay For Open Ones

An anonymous reader points to a story at NewsForge, writing "EGOVOS analyzes the recently passed South African OSS plan and proposes a great way to fund Open Source education and development until companies comply with open standards. Microsoft pays a 10% penalty until their products comply with open standards. That would be billions of dollars to Open Source to compensate for an unlevel playing field until it is leveled. All the policy guidelines for governments are worth reading. This looks like a workable plan from a credible group." Reader johndiii clarifies: "From what I have been able to see, the strategy document is 'proposed,' not 'recently passed,' and is not yet official policy of the South African government."

Comments

Effective OSS project revenue collection

[SiliconJesus]

I think that the way that Transgaming and Codeweavers (Winex and Crossover respectively) manage revenue collection / open source application source generation is very intelligent. For a small fee, you get their 'enhanced' version of an open source program (wine), for which they get paid. In return, both companies contribute to the source of the main project with well bug-tested code. It may be a rev or two behind their 'pay' applications, but it allows the project to make great leaps and bounds being funded totally by commercial use.

Personally - I have purchaced both and use them extensively to get to everything from Office 2000 to Diablo II working on my Linux boxes at home and work. I like that with Winex, I purchace a 'subscription' for $5 a month, which I can discontinue at any time, which only cuts me off from updating my binary.

If Microsoft was willing to publish 'old' API suites for free (even ones for Windows 9x), it would be a step in the right direction. It would give the communities of Windows Application Developers a stand on the playing field for begining to develop stable applications in the new (XP / Windows 2003 Server) environment.