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The "Dangers" of Free
With today's Free Summit broaching the subject of the "dangers" of free, TechDirt has an interesting perusal of why free often can't work without a good business model and why it often gets such a bad reputation. "I tend to wonder if this is really a case of free gone wrong or free done wrong. First, I'm always a bit skeptical of 'free' business models that rely on a 'free' scarcity (such as physical newspapers). While it can work in some cases, it's much more difficult. You're not leveraging an infinite good -- you're putting yourself in a big hole that you have to be able to climb out of. Second, in some ways the model that was set up was a static one where everyone focused on the 'free' part, and no one looked at leapfrogging the others by providing additional value where money could be made. The trick with free is you need to leverage the free part to increase the value of something that is scarce and that you control, which is not easily copied. [...] Still, it's an important point that bears repeating. Free, by itself, is meaningless. Free, with a bad business model, isn't helpful either. The real trick is figuring out how to properly combine free with a good business model, and then you can succeed."
...accessories like kids, spouse and house come in handy in winter :-)
Name three things you really shouldn't burn just to keep warm. Sicko.
No, not a land war in Asia. From here:
The Open Source and CopyLeft people are acting as if common sense prevails in US copyright law, and they are, I am told, dead wrong.
Best Slashdot Co
If only there were a way for the community to identify comments that don't contribute to the conversation and mark them as such. Then we could give users a mechanism by which to filter out comments marked in this way...
Hamas?
Only on /. could this comment be moderated "Insightful" which as disturbing as it is, I guess is true...
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
You've enlightened me, sir! Up to now I couldn't understand why proprietary software like Windows and Internet Explorer have experienced so many fewer security vulnerabilities than Free ones like OpenBSD and Firefox. The customers speak and Microsoft listens!