I'm surprised by how many posters discount LC's basic business model. The fact is we are in the very early stages of the adoption curve for Open Source technologies (and that's probably even true of Apache, whose 62% market share could easily climb to >90% in the next five years.) In the future there are going to be tons of companies who want (need) some legal entity to stand behind their systems. The fact that the source is open and HOWTOs are plentiful only means that the support will be easier to provide than for proprietary apps, so customer satisfaction should slowly rise. Unfortunately, LC has bungled the whole thing.
I hate to quote scrip-cha but I think Eric Raymond and Tim O'Reilly are right on regarding the viability of the business model. (Granted, TOR is arguing for a much more expanded services offering, but it's still a services offering.)
Any Exposure for Open Source is Good
on
Lineo Plans IPO
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· Score: 2
Many, many CIOs and CTOs across the world are still amazingly uninformed about how widespread the Linux & Open Source movements are. Although the announcements have received plenty of press in some quarters, purchasers in the business community are often ignorant of the initiatives of for example, IBM, Compaq and Dell behind Linux, let alone something like Nokia's adoption of Linux over WinCE. When you get someone like Lineo coming out and publicizing major contracts with Sun (of all people) and DaiShin, and generally acting like a decent, sustainable business, then the corporate buyers of products and services take another slight little shift toward "getting" the viability of the Open Source development model. It's a confidence-building process.
That's provided Lineo don't botch the thing (as Linuxcare has almost done). I wish them luck.
The companies are going to do what they feel is in their best interest, and we're not going to somehow magically decide for every corporation in the world how things will work.
If the Open Source community continues its campaign of educating the business community on the advantages of both libre & gratis software, commercial vendors will be forced to justify the cost of their packages. They will still be able to SELL the software (and I think that is a good thing) but they'll have to step forward with real value-added services, like product customization, support, training and documentation to maintain a revenue stream. In the end, the business community benefits because they pay less and get more, and the technical community benefits because they work on real world problems/projects, and not ones created by someone else's bad technical decisions.
An excellent gloss on the interesting original article. Yates (a great book) is pretty persuasive about the fundamental dissimilarity of Bruno and Galileo. Her conclusion: "Galileo's views were based on genuine mathematics and mechanics; he lived in a different mental world from Giordano Bruno...[and] reached his conclusions on genuinely scientific grounds." (355).
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I'm surprised by how many posters discount LC's basic business model. The fact is we are in the very early stages of the adoption curve for Open Source technologies (and that's probably even true of Apache, whose 62% market share could easily climb to >90% in the next five years.) In the future there are going to be tons of companies who want (need) some legal entity to stand behind their systems. The fact that the source is open and HOWTOs are plentiful only means that the support will be easier to provide than for proprietary apps, so customer satisfaction should slowly rise. Unfortunately, LC has bungled the whole thing.
I hate to quote scrip-cha but I think Eric Raymond and Tim O'Reilly are right on regarding the viability of the business model. (Granted, TOR is arguing for a much more expanded services offering, but it's still a services offering.)
Many, many CIOs and CTOs across the world are still amazingly uninformed about how widespread the Linux & Open Source movements are. Although the announcements have received plenty of press in some quarters, purchasers in the business community are often ignorant of the initiatives of for example, IBM, Compaq and Dell behind Linux, let alone something like Nokia's adoption of Linux over WinCE. When you get someone like Lineo coming out and publicizing major contracts with Sun (of all people) and DaiShin, and generally acting like a decent, sustainable business, then the corporate buyers of products and services take another slight little shift toward "getting" the viability of the Open Source development model. It's a confidence-building process.
That's provided Lineo don't botch the thing (as Linuxcare has almost done). I wish them luck.
The companies are going to do what they feel is in their best interest, and we're not going to somehow magically decide for every corporation in the world how things will work.
If the Open Source community continues its campaign of educating the business community on the advantages of both libre & gratis software, commercial vendors will be forced to justify the cost of their packages. They will still be able to SELL the software (and I think that is a good thing) but they'll have to step forward with real value-added services, like product customization, support, training and documentation to maintain a revenue stream. In the end, the business community benefits because they pay less and get more, and the technical community benefits because they work on real world problems/projects, and not ones created by someone else's bad technical decisions.
The entire text of Open Sources can be found at the O'Reilly site. The excellent chapter on licenses is written by Bruce Perens. See:
e rens.html
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/p
Crowley just wrote a review for last Sunday's NY Times Book Review. See the Times site.
An excellent gloss on the interesting original article. Yates (a great book) is pretty persuasive about the fundamental dissimilarity of Bruno and Galileo. Her conclusion: "Galileo's views were based on genuine mathematics and mechanics; he lived in a different mental world from Giordano Bruno...[and] reached his conclusions on genuinely scientific grounds." (355).
...
Though you've got to love the solar magic