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Interclue and What Going Proprietary Can Do

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the don't-get-greedy dept.

Linux.com (which shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) has an interesting look at what going proprietary can mean for your overall effectiveness. Using Firefox extension "Interclue" as the object lesson, the piece looks at both the engineering and social difficulties surrounding the project. "Even more significantly, the efforts to commercialize only detract from the software itself. The basic idea behind Interclue would make for a handy Web utility, but seems too slight to build a business around. The effort to do so only leads to complications that do nothing to enhance the basic utility, and to pleas for donations that can only annoy. The result is that, if your position on free software doesn't lead you to avoid Interclue, the efforts to monetize it almost certainly will."

5 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Definition time. by AltGrendel · · Score: 3, Informative
    From WikiPedia:

    Angel capital is money invested in a business to provide equity capital, not debt which must be repaid regardless of the success of the business. More often than not angel investments are combination of funds and the business expertise of the investor(s). Angel investment transactions are made with the expectation of a very large financial return to the investor per dollar invested if the business succeeds. Angel investments are also made with the expectation of psychological rewards for the investors. These are obtained from their personal contributions to the growth of the business, time and business expertise. The investment decision is thus both financial and personal. Risk and reward take a more complex form than in almost any other financial transaction. It is risk and rewards.

    --
    The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination

    - Douglas Adams

  2. Re:firefox+xul? by PCM2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Does anybody really write applications using XUL?

    Miro is one.

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
  3. Clue Stick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

    If you don't know what newspeak is you have a lot of fucking catching up to do before you can pretend to be smarter than anyone.

  4. Re:firefox+xul? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...and songbird is the other.

    And CeltX and chatzilla and NVU and Cyclone3...

  5. Re:I also agree by MrNaz · · Score: 2, Informative

    Tell that to Diebold.

    --
    I hate printers.