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Stanford Teaching MBAs How To Fight Open Source

Posted by timothy on from the then-they-fight-you dept.

mjasay writes "As if the proprietary software world needed any help, two business professors from Harvard and Stanford have combined to publish 'Divide and Conquer: Competing with Free Technology Under Network Effects,' a research paper dedicated to helping business executives fight the onslaught of open source software. The professors advise 'the commercial vendor ... to bring its product to market first, to judiciously improve its product features, to keep its product "closed" so the open source product cannot tap into the network already built by the commercial product, and to segment the market so it can take advantage of a divide-and-conquer strategy.' The professors also suggest that 'embrace and extend' is a great model for when the open source product gets to market first. Glad to see that $48,921 that Stanford MBAs pay being put to good use. Having said that, such research is perhaps a great, market-driven indication that open source is having a serious effect on proprietary technology vendors."

6 of 430 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 0, Troll

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. Re:I'm curious by David+Gerard · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yeah. Apple has declared itself officially Evil, and they're vastly successful. Microsoft's evil is really pretty mediocre and ineffectual these days, but man, they used to be top class at evil.

    So when do we get some really evil Free Software, huh?

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
  3. Re:Awesome... by David+Gerard · · Score: 1, Troll

    These guys are basically selling snake oil to the gullible end of the obsessive control addict market.

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
  4. Re:Competition is good by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Uh, no. In the case of linux, fragmentation is the result of lots of people producing more or less the same product with incompatibility because the barrier to entry is relatively low.

  5. Re:I'm curious by gnupun · · Score: 0, Troll
    Understand what wrong? You imagine people will keep working on software out of altruistic desire forever? Many people I know are in this profession solely for the high salaries. Once OSS peanut-salary is the norm, they will dump this profession like a cheap rental suit.

    Free software, free music, free movies, free everything! This is turning into a planet full of self-righteous leeches.

  6. Re:Investors have to question and reject this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Microsoft. It's Microsoft . Is that so hard? I mean, even MS or MSFT is easier than that childish dollar sign, no?

    How do you expect people to take you seriously?