The thing is, that FOSS doesn't make it's money by "selling software". It makes it's money by selling "non-copyable" services.
It seems true that few - if any - open source companies make money by just "selling bits." But it could be done. If a company creates a GPL'd program (let's say it's a case where it's GPL by virtue of incorporating other GPL'ed works) they are not required to give free binaries to anybody. They can sell the binaries for a bazillion dollars if they want... but must distribute the source, under the GPL, *with* the binaries (or include a written offer to provide the source).
The only real fly in the ointment here is that there customer can take the program and turn around and redistribute it, for any price they wish, including free. So most people look at that as precluding making money from selling GPL'd programs... but if your customer(s) have no real incentive to try and undermine your business by redistributing your program, it's entirely possible that it will never come up. And the more niche / specialized (and therefore less generally useful) your program is, the less likely it seems that your customer would want to bother with doing something like that.
The counter-argument, of course, is that you have no way of knowing whether or not your code will eventually leak into "the wild." And you have no way of guaranteeing that it won't happen. But even if it does, that still doesn't necessarily mean you can't still make money. Red Hat makes money selling RHEL Subscriptions, where part of what you're paying for is an entitlement to download ISOs, even though CentOS binaries are freely available.
M. Stallman is a 53-year-old anticorporate crusader who has argued for 20 years that most software should be free of charge.
and realized that the author of TFA has no fucking clue what he's talking about. Stallman and the FSF are fine with people charging money for software... The author clearly does not grok the difference between "free as in beer" and "free as in speech."
Google is still my first stop for many things, but for a LOT of queries I do, it's google with 'site:wikipedia.org' as part of the query. And more and more often I find myself typing in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Subject_I_Want_T o_Know_About directly.
I would definitely say that my search habits are shifting in a gradual fashion, towards using wikipedia more and more. But Wikipedia hasn't replaced Google, they kinda supplement each other.
A man who is so full of self-importance he fails to see the that libertarianism is just yet another Utopia,
(l|L)ibertarianism is hardly "just another Utopia." Anything but, actually. Utopian ideologies are the ones that presume that we can achieve a state where everybody is happy and life is just perfect and, well, utopian. (l|L)ibertarianism makes no presumption that such a thing is possible, or even desirable: (l|L)ibertarians promote their ideology on the basis that freedom is simply the Right Thing To Do, while acknowledging (well, most of us) that a purely (l|L)ibertarian society might not always guarantee the best possible outcome for everybody involved. But we believe it gives each individual the freedom to pursue happiness and find it in whatever way they might, short of infringing on anyone else's rights.
Re:Sounds like an oxymoron in the making
on
Oracle Linux?
·
· Score: 1
Why would a company develop an operating system that is a rebranded version of one that is available for free. Also, the way I understand the GNU, wouldn't they have to release the changes they make to the kernel to the community at large? In that case, why pay for it when you can re-compile it yourself.
For that matter, why does anybody pay for SuSE or RHEL? Sometimes the value is not just in the actual bits. Maybe it's the confidence that "this will just work, and if it doesn't there's somebody to call and bitch out." Maybe it's tech support, whether that be electronic, phone, or on-site. Anyway, there's no less reason for somebody to pay for Oracle Linux than there is for them to pay for Red Hat Linux or SuSE or any other commercial distro. And people are paying for those now.
------- Comment #64 From Sean Kent 2004-07-28 07:00 PDT [reply] -------
(In reply to comment #57) > (From update of attachment 148928 [edit]) > I don't think there's agreement yet that we even want this.
Ben, exactly who is "we"? If by "we" you mean you and the other devs, I would point you to the 44 votes supporting this request. Out of over 800 FF bugs with at least 1 vote, it ranks #16! Not to mention that most of the 3rd party builders are now including this patch because they agree it adds value. So what exactly is the controversy? We are talking about adding a few lines of code, which will provide a feature that a LOT of users want. We have had a working patch for 2 months at this point - what is the harm in checking it in?
------- Comment #67 From Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email) 2004-07-30 16:53 PDT [reply] -------
We = me, myself and I;-D
although I asked blake, asa and dbaron and they all tended to agree, I think.
And for anyone making the "It's got n votes argument," it's worth keeping in mind that there are over 60,000 people that have Bugzilla activity (and so every opportunity to vote for any bug). That would mean this bug has the support of approximately 0.073% of Bugzilla users. Then it's worth noting that Bugzilla users are approximately 60,000 of the most advanced users of the 740,000,000 people connected to the web. That certainly isn't much of a case for real support.
So why even have the vote feature in Bugzilla at all? What they're saying, in essence, is "We don't give a f%!k about votes, we know what's best for you, QED."
The people running the show at the Mozilla Foundation / Corporation don't care about what the community wants. They know that they know best what everybody else needs, and they're going to give it to you, and you're going to like it whether you like it or not.
Voting on bugs, working on this wishlist, posting to the wishlist newsgroup, are all a total waste of time and cycles. Just don't do it.
MySQL is quite vast, I can't just pick up the code and start selling my own "improved distro".
No, but it would be fairly easy to fork the code and have a release that (initiall) is 100% functionally equivelant to MySQL. In which case, the only thing keeping customers on MySQL's distro instead of yours is reputation, brand recognition, etc.
And while you probably couldn't roll out a significantly improved MySQL tomorrow (unless you'd been working with the code for a few years and were a RDBMS expert) it would be a lot easier to roll out an improved MySQL (where you do have the code) than an improved SQL Server or Oracle 10g or DB/2.
And for all MySQL know, there *is* some guy out there who's silently been working on an improved version for the last 3 years, who is just about to release a new version which will be much better and which *their* developers won't (initially) be familiar with.
IMO, the "unable to block the competition" factor is a significant difference between an open-source business and a business based on proprietary code. The barrier to entry for a competitor might not be non-existent, but it is lower.
Most of the lesser employees are like 35 year old people with purple mohawks (or they WANT one) lisitning to 1990's NIN albums on repeat trying to relive there teenage years.
And this is bad, how? I think it's great for somebody to be 35 and still refusing to act like the stereotypical "adult."
Then again, my role models in life are two old as hell guys I saw at Ozzfest back in like '98. Motorhead opened that year on the main stage, and these two old grey-hairs with long grey beards were out there fist-pumping, head-banging, singing, screaming and raising hell while Motorhead were playing "Ace of Spades" and "Iron Fist" etc. I remember thinking "Yeah, that's me: when I'm 60+ years old I'll still be at heavy metal shows, partying, raising hell and having a grand old time.":-)
With cubicles, what do you guys think of the low walls?
I interviewed with Blue Cross / Blue Shield of North Carolina a little over a year ago... as soon as we walked into the area where the developers were working, I noticed that they had those low walled cubicles. I only stayed for the interview out of politeness. When the HR lady called to ask about scheduling a follow-up interview, I declined and told her that I could not work for a company that did not provide a suitable workspace for their employees.
That's what I think about low-walled cubicles, FWIW.
I have no business plan, or enough information to even know the potential of the market I'm targeting. All I know is that the products available now suck, and not just a little. So my question is, what should be my first step to starting a startup at this point? What do I need before I can approach investors?
I would say that you need several things: some fundamental business know-how, some idea of what business model you might adopt for your business, and some contacts that can help out. You can gain these things in a variety of ways.
Regarding basic business know-how:
You could take classes in the basics of management, micro-economics, macro-enonomics, business finance, etc. at a local community college or something. You could self educate yourself by just doing a lot of reading; taking the appraoch I've dubbed the used bookstore MBA, etc.
See if you have any friends or acquaintances that run their own business (it doesn't have to be tech related). Ask them to meet you for lunch to sit and just chat about business. Ask them for advice, tips, other contacts, etc. Find out if your area has any sort of business networking group, a "leads group," etc. If so, join and attend meetings. Meet people, talk to them, throw ideas around, ask interesting people out to lunch, etc. Attend local users groups meetings, LUGs, JUGs, etc. Not all of the attendees will be (just) techies: some will be entrepreneurs, managers, etc. that could be potential partners, future employees, etc. Attend and get to know people. Chat, schmooze and take notes. Ask interesting people out to lunch. Lather, rinse, repeat. Read The Little Black Book of Connections and similiar books.
If you do enough of this, you will eventually reach a point where you have some solid ideas about what to do, and more specific questions to ask. Once you reach that point, you can start digging deeper with help from your new-found connections and other resources.
Yes, but the difference between typical startups and your ideas is that in typical startups they first have an understanding of how it would make them money -- which for post-1999 VC's is nice to know.
Ok, point taken. However, none of these ideas is entirely speculative; there are companies out there employing some or all of these approaches, among others. Digium is a good example of the model that involves selling both hardware and an open-source software solution along with training, services, etc.
I should also say that I think a successful open-source company will probably need a combination of approaches. Take RedHat for example: they do "regular" support subscriptions, professional services, training and the hosted systems-management model. Looking at that model as a "whole" you could argue that it is somewhat "proven" now. Of course one could also argue that RH hasn't been around long enough to really "prove" that this model is viable for the long haul.
I can sorta agree with that, but not completely. In a sense, all startups have a touch of "let's build this and hope we can make money off of it." I mean, nothing is guaranteed to succeed in the market, even if it's some really clever new technology that's kept proprietary. To me, the big difference between an open-source company and a "regular" company is the lower barrier to entry for competition. Since anybody can come along tomorrow, fork your source, rename it and suddenly you have a new competitor that has a product technically equivelant to yours.
This is why I think running an open-source business requires a different focus, different skills, attitudes, etc. My thesis is that running a successful open-source business requires much more emphasis on building relationships and establishing more of a partnership with customers than a traditional "us supplier, you customer" model. A good open-source company, to me, should be able to partner with a customer to provide a broad spectrum of services and products and should treat things very holistically. I guess you could say that I see services and relationships as the real lynchpin of the company, not the actual software product; since those things aren't as easy to replicate (by a would be competitor).
Bad form to reply to oneself, but I should point out that I'm NOT a fan of "business process" patents, not do I advocate getting such things. But they do exist and in the context of the question do seem relevant, which is why I asked. Please do not take my post as an endorsement of business process patents (or patents in general).
You don't need to be an Open-Source VC expert to see that there are options other than just support. At least, depending on how exactly you define "support." Consider things like:
professional services; integration, consulting: "Can you make FooBar2003 work with BlazzleFlaz1998?" "Sure, that'll be $300 / hour for custom integration work"
one-of customizations for $$$: "Can you add a feature to FooBar2003 to make it do Blah?" "Sure, that'll be X-thousand dollars if you want the resulting change to be proprietary (eg, we don't roll it into the open-source version) or Y-thousand if the change gets rolled into the base version.
Hosted systems-management that works with the product in some meaningful way; see RHN from RedHat for an example of that.
Sell hardware as well, and package hardware / software bundles that are pre-assembled to fit some specific purpose.
Sell "stacks" where you assemble various open-source packages into a cohesive whole to solve some problem. In this case, what you're really selling isn't the bits, but the expertise and time to research, review, experiment, validate, etc.
Sell T-Shirts and stuff on CafePress.com
There are others of course, but those are a couple that jumped to mind. Google for Open Source Business Models for more.
Traditionally it's held that one of the things a company should have, if seeking venture capital, is "proprietary technology." Obviously in the case of an open-source company this will never hold. Open-Source based businesses are always fundamentally different from an old-school technology company in that you're not really selling bits; you're selling "something else" where the "something else" may vary depending on the business model.
So given that, and the thesis (mine at least) that the barriers to entry for competition are lower for an open-source company, what do you look for in a potential investment? Are you looking for some radically new and innovative business model; with accompanying patent? Or is it all about execution, suggesting that a would-be open-source company has to meet a higher standard in terms of attracting business and establishing a customer base *before* getting funded?
The defination of a society is a group of people who band together for the common good.
Exactly. The problem is when a group of people decide to form a "society" and then want to involuntarily include people who might not want to be part of it.
The only way to have enough money to never worry about medical bills is to be born rich, or win the lottery. Period. You're talking about less than 1% of the population.
Or you could work hard, live a fiscally responsible lifestyle, live below your means - instead of living on credit card debt like so many people - and save money for a rainy day. And if something really crazy happens and you find that you aren't prepared for it, despite living responsibly, you can ask for charity from your friends, family, community, etc.
The other reason is that you can see tangible benefits by getting staff out of the silo-metality that cubes and single offices generate, and into spaces where they can communicate with each other. This is especially important if your business depends on people working together in teams.
I call bullshit. What you refer to as a "silo mentality" I refer to as "being able to work without a continuous stream of chatter, random noise, ringing phones, people talking on speakerphones, and various other interruptions." Knowledge workers of any kind should have individual offices, with doors. If you want to foster teamwork, create team-space areas that people can temporarily occupy when they need to work in close concert for a while, but they should always have a real office to go back to for when isolation is necessary.
I should add that those people who are pissing their rent money away at online gambling web sites will just find another irresponsible behavior to partake in once their e-casinos are shuttered. I'd venture to say that no society in the history of the planet has ever been able to legislate responsible behavior. Either you're responsible with your money or you're not.
Yeah, personal freedom / personal responsibility. The price of freedom is responsibility. And if the outcome of ones actions are negative, then so be it. It may sound harsh, but I cannot accept the idea of the govt. curtailing (or attempting to curtail) my freedoms because somebody else might do something irresponsible and harm themselves (or even somebody else for that matter).
Not that I'm not sympathetic to people with various problems, such as gambling addiction, drug addiction, etc. But I'll choose how (if at all) I want to contribute to mitigating that problem, and not at the expense of my freedom as a sovereign individual.
The issue is not gambling. The issue is compliance with law.
Right, and the best way to deal with a bad law (defined as any law that inhibits your personal freedom to do anything you want other than harming someone else or infringing on someone else's rights) is to ignore it.
YRO aside, it is currently illegal is gamble in most of the United States anyway, except certain states and indian reservations. So, in this case, I don't really feel that anyone's "rights" are being trampled
Rights do not depend on laws; either to grant said rights, nor can rights be revoked by law. If something is a right then it's something you can do without asking anybody's permission, period. You can voluntary accept the authority of some entity (maybe called "government" or something) to restrict *your* rights if *you* want to, but don't make the mistake of assuming that govt. has any inate authority to restrict anyone else's rights.
As such, I will say that free people have a "right to gamble" and have most likely never granted the United States government - or any other government - any authority to restrict it. As far as I'm concerned, any law restricting gambling is invalid, null and void and should be ignored.
Basically it goes back to the old saw... "We have exactly as much freedom as we are willing to demand and as we can defend."
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, that FOSS doesn't make it's money by "selling software". It makes it's money by selling "non-copyable" services.
It seems true that few - if any - open source companies make money by just "selling bits." But it could be done. If a company creates a GPL'd program (let's say it's a case where it's GPL by virtue of incorporating other GPL'ed works) they are not required to give free binaries to anybody. They can sell the binaries for a bazillion dollars if they want... but must distribute the source, under the GPL, *with* the binaries (or include a written offer to provide the source).
The only real fly in the ointment here is that there customer can take the program and turn around and redistribute it, for any price they wish, including free. So most people look at that as precluding making money from selling GPL'd programs... but if your customer(s) have no real incentive to try and undermine your business by redistributing your program, it's entirely possible that it will never come up. And the more niche / specialized (and therefore less generally useful) your program is, the less likely it seems that your customer would want to bother with doing something like that.
The counter-argument, of course, is that you have no way of knowing whether or not your code will eventually leak into "the wild." And you have no way of guaranteeing that it won't happen. But even if it does, that still doesn't necessarily mean you can't still make money. Red Hat makes money selling RHEL Subscriptions, where part of what you're paying for is an entitlement to download ISOs, even though CentOS binaries are freely available.
I got as far as this part:
M. Stallman is a 53-year-old anticorporate crusader who has argued for 20 years that most software should be free of charge.
and realized that the author of TFA has no fucking clue what he's talking about. Stallman and the FSF are fine with people
charging money for software... The author clearly does not grok the difference between "free as in beer" and "free as in speech."
Another option:
r g+%25s
1. Create a firefox bookmark for this url:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awikipedia.o
2. give it a keyword like 'gwp'
3. That's it, now try it by typing "gwp starcraft" into your location bar for example.
Same difference, just using Google to search Wikipedia.
Google is still my first stop for many things, but for a LOT of queries I do, it's google with 'site:wikipedia.org' asT o_Know_About
part of the query. And more and more often I find myself typing in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Subject_I_Want_
directly.
I would definitely say that my search habits are shifting in a gradual fashion, towards using wikipedia more and more. But Wikipedia
hasn't replaced Google, they kinda supplement each other.
A man who is so full of self-importance he fails to see the that libertarianism is just yet another Utopia,
(l|L)ibertarianism is hardly "just another Utopia." Anything but, actually. Utopian ideologies are the ones that presume that
we can achieve a state where everybody is happy and life is just perfect and, well, utopian. (l|L)ibertarianism makes no
presumption that such a thing is possible, or even desirable: (l|L)ibertarians promote their ideology on the basis that freedom
is simply the Right Thing To Do, while acknowledging (well, most of us) that a purely (l|L)ibertarian society might not
always guarantee the best possible outcome for everybody involved. But we believe it gives each individual the freedom
to pursue happiness and find it in whatever way they might, short of infringing on anyone else's rights.
Why would a company develop an operating system that is a rebranded version of one that is available for free. Also, the way I understand the GNU, wouldn't they have to release the changes they make to the kernel to the community at large? In that case, why pay for it when you can re-compile it yourself.
For that matter, why does anybody pay for SuSE or RHEL? Sometimes the value is not just in the actual bits. Maybe it's the confidence that "this will just work, and if it doesn't there's somebody to call and bitch out." Maybe it's tech support, whether that be electronic, phone, or on-site. Anyway, there's no less reason for somebody to pay for Oracle Linux than there is for them to pay for Red Hat Linux or SuSE or any other commercial distro. And people are paying for those now.
From https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2045
------- Comment #64 From Sean Kent 2004-07-28 07:00 PDT [reply] -------
(In reply to comment #57)
> (From update of attachment 148928 [edit])
> I don't think there's agreement yet that we even want this.
Ben, exactly who is "we"? If by "we" you mean you and the other devs, I would
point you to the 44 votes supporting this request. Out of over 800 FF bugs
with at least 1 vote, it ranks #16! Not to mention that most of the 3rd party
builders are now including this patch because they agree it adds value. So
what exactly is the controversy? We are talking about adding a few lines of
code, which will provide a feature that a LOT of users want. We have had a
working patch for 2 months at this point - what is the harm in checking it in?
------- Comment #67 From Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email) 2004-07-30 16:53 PDT [reply] -------
We = me, myself and I
although I asked blake, asa and dbaron and they all tended to agree, I think.
Click in the frame, and click print.
------- Comment #68 From Asa Dotzler 2004-07-30 16:56 PDT [reply] -------
Not gonna happen. Make an extension.
------- Comment #70 From Asa Dotzler 2004-07-30 17:00 PDT [reply] -------
And for anyone making the "It's got n votes argument," it's worth keeping in
mind that there are over 60,000 people that have Bugzilla activity (and so every
opportunity to vote for any bug). That would mean this bug has the support of
approximately 0.073% of Bugzilla users. Then it's worth noting that Bugzilla
users are approximately 60,000 of the most advanced users of the 740,000,000
people connected to the web. That certainly isn't much of a case for real support.
So why even have the vote feature in Bugzilla at all? What they're saying, in essence, is "We don't
give a f%!k about votes, we know what's best for you, QED."
The people running the show at the Mozilla Foundation / Corporation don't care about what the community wants. They know that they know best what everybody else needs, and they're going to give it to you, and you're going to like it whether you like it or not.
Voting on bugs, working on this wishlist, posting to the wishlist newsgroup, are all a total waste of time and cycles. Just don't do it.
MySQL is quite vast, I can't just pick up the code and start selling my own "improved distro".
No, but it would be fairly easy to fork the code and have a release that (initiall) is 100% functionally
equivelant to MySQL. In which case, the only thing keeping customers on MySQL's distro instead of yours
is reputation, brand recognition, etc.
And while you probably couldn't roll out a significantly improved MySQL tomorrow (unless you'd been
working with the code for a few years and were a RDBMS expert) it would be a lot easier to roll
out an improved MySQL (where you do have the code) than an improved SQL Server or Oracle 10g or DB/2.
And for all MySQL know, there *is* some guy out there who's silently been working on an improved
version for the last 3 years, who is just about to release a new version which will be much better
and which *their* developers won't (initially) be familiar with.
IMO, the "unable to block the competition" factor is a significant difference between an
open-source business and a business based on proprietary code. The barrier to entry for
a competitor might not be non-existent, but it is lower.
Most of the lesser employees are like 35 year old people with purple mohawks (or they WANT one) lisitning to 1990's NIN albums on repeat trying to relive there teenage years.
:-)
And this is bad, how? I think it's great for somebody to be 35 and still refusing to act like the stereotypical "adult."
Then again, my role models in life are two old as hell guys I saw at Ozzfest back in like '98. Motorhead opened that year on the
main stage, and these two old grey-hairs with long grey beards were out there fist-pumping, head-banging, singing, screaming
and raising hell while Motorhead were playing "Ace of Spades" and "Iron Fist" etc. I remember thinking "Yeah, that's me: when I'm 60+ years old
I'll still be at heavy metal shows, partying, raising hell and having a grand old time."
With cubicles, what do you guys think of the low walls?
I interviewed with Blue Cross / Blue Shield of North Carolina a little over a year ago... as soon as we walked into the area where the developers were working, I noticed that they had those low walled cubicles. I only stayed for the interview out of politeness. When the HR lady called to ask about scheduling a follow-up interview, I declined and told her that I could not work for a company that did not provide a suitable workspace for their employees.
That's what I think about low-walled cubicles, FWIW.
The Algorithm Design Manual is pretty good.
I have no business plan, or enough information to even know the potential of the market I'm targeting. All I know is that the products available now suck, and not just a little. So my question is, what should be my first step to starting a startup at this point? What do I need before I can approach investors?
I would say that you need several things: some fundamental business know-how, some idea of what business model you might adopt for your business, and some contacts that can help out. You can gain these things in a variety of ways.
Regarding basic business know-how:
You could take classes in the basics of management, micro-economics, macro-enonomics, business finance, etc. at a local community college or something. You could self educate yourself by just doing a lot of reading; taking the appraoch I've dubbed the used bookstore MBA, etc.
Regarding business model:
Google and blogs are your friend here, as well as books about existing open-source companies and startups. Google for
Open Source Business Models and just start reading. Read Under The Radar, Under The Radar, Art of the Start and High Tech Startup among others.
Regarding contacts:
See if you have any friends or acquaintances that run their own business (it doesn't have to be tech related). Ask them to meet you for lunch
to sit and just chat about business. Ask them for advice, tips, other contacts, etc. Find out if your area has any sort of business networking group, a "leads group," etc. If so, join and attend meetings. Meet people, talk to them, throw ideas around, ask interesting people out to lunch, etc. Attend local users groups meetings, LUGs, JUGs, etc. Not all of the attendees will be (just) techies: some will be entrepreneurs, managers, etc. that could be potential partners, future employees, etc. Attend and get to know people. Chat, schmooze and take notes. Ask interesting people out to lunch. Lather, rinse, repeat. Read The Little Black Book of Connections and similiar books.
If you do enough of this, you will eventually reach a point where you have some solid ideas about what to do, and more specific questions to ask. Once you reach that point, you can start digging deeper with help from your new-found connections and other resources.
Yes, but the difference between typical startups and your ideas is that in typical startups they first have an understanding of how it would make them money -- which for post-1999 VC's is nice to know.
Ok, point taken. However, none of these ideas is entirely speculative; there are companies out there employing some or all of these approaches, among others. Digium is a good example of the model that involves selling both hardware and an
open-source software solution along with training, services, etc.
I should also say that I think a successful open-source company will probably need a combination of approaches. Take RedHat for example: they do "regular" support subscriptions, professional services, training and the hosted systems-management model. Looking at that model as a "whole" you could argue that it is somewhat "proven" now. Of course one could also argue that RH hasn't been around long enough to really "prove" that this model
is viable for the long haul.
I can sorta agree with that, but not completely. In a sense, all startups have a touch of "let's build this and hope we can make money off of it." I mean, nothing is guaranteed to succeed in the market, even if it's some really clever new technology that's kept proprietary. To me, the big difference between an open-source company and a "regular" company is the lower barrier to entry for competition. Since anybody can come along tomorrow, fork your source, rename it and suddenly you have a new competitor that has a product technically equivelant to yours.
This is why I think running an open-source business requires a different focus, different skills, attitudes, etc. My thesis is that running
a successful open-source business requires much more emphasis on building relationships and establishing more of a partnership with customers
than a traditional "us supplier, you customer" model. A good open-source company, to me, should be able to partner with a customer to
provide a broad spectrum of services and products and should treat things very holistically. I guess you could say that I see services
and relationships as the real lynchpin of the company, not the actual software product; since those things aren't as easy to replicate (by a would be competitor).
Think of "snow" as being synonymous with "fool" or "trick" or "mislead." See the various definitions of snow job.
Bad form to reply to oneself, but I should point out that I'm NOT a fan of "business process" patents, not do I advocate getting such things.
But they do exist and in the context of the question do seem relevant, which is why I asked. Please do not take my post as
an endorsement of business process patents (or patents in general).
You don't need to be an Open-Source VC expert to see that there are options other than just support. At least, depending on how
exactly you define "support." Consider things like:
professional services; integration, consulting: "Can you make FooBar2003 work with BlazzleFlaz1998?" "Sure, that'll be $300 / hour
for custom integration work"
one-of customizations for $$$: "Can you add a feature to FooBar2003 to make it do Blah?" "Sure, that'll be X-thousand dollars if
you want the resulting change to be proprietary (eg, we don't roll it into the open-source version) or Y-thousand if the change
gets rolled into the base version.
Hosted systems-management that works with the product in some meaningful way; see RHN from RedHat for an example of that.
Sell hardware as well, and package hardware / software bundles that are pre-assembled to fit some specific purpose.
Sell "stacks" where you assemble various open-source packages into a cohesive whole to solve some problem. In this case, what
you're really selling isn't the bits, but the expertise and time to research, review, experiment, validate, etc.
Sell T-Shirts and stuff on CafePress.com
There are others of course, but those are a couple that jumped to mind. Google for Open Source Business Models for more.
Traditionally it's held that one of the things a company should have, if seeking venture capital, is "proprietary technology." Obviously in the
case of an open-source company this will never hold. Open-Source based businesses are always fundamentally different from an old-school technology
company in that you're not really selling bits; you're selling "something else" where the "something else" may vary depending on the business model.
So given that, and the thesis (mine at least) that the barriers to entry for competition are lower for an open-source company, what do you look for
in a potential investment? Are you looking for some radically new and innovative business model; with accompanying patent? Or is it all
about execution, suggesting that a would-be open-source company has to meet a higher standard in terms of attracting business and establishing
a customer base *before* getting funded?
The defination of a society is a group of people who band together for the common good.
Exactly. The problem is when a group of people decide to form a "society" and then want
to involuntarily include people who might not want to be part of it.
The only way to have enough money to never worry about medical bills is to be born rich, or win the lottery. Period. You're talking about less than 1% of the population.
Or you could work hard, live a fiscally responsible lifestyle, live below your means - instead of living on credit card debt
like so many people - and save money for a rainy day. And if something really crazy happens and you find that
you aren't prepared for it, despite living responsibly, you can ask for charity from your friends, family, community, etc.
The other reason is that you can see tangible benefits by getting staff out of the silo-metality that cubes and single offices generate, and into spaces where they can communicate with each other. This is especially important if your business depends on people working together in teams.
I call bullshit. What you refer to as a "silo mentality" I refer to as "being able to work without a continuous stream of chatter, random noise, ringing phones, people talking on speakerphones, and various other interruptions." Knowledge workers of any kind should have individual offices, with doors. If you want to foster teamwork, create team-space areas that people can temporarily occupy when they need to work in close concert for a while, but they should always have a real office to go back to for when isolation is necessary.
I should add that those people who are pissing their rent money away at online gambling web sites will just find another irresponsible behavior to partake in once their e-casinos are shuttered. I'd venture to say that no society in the history of the planet has ever been able to legislate responsible behavior. Either you're responsible with your money or you're not.
Yeah, personal freedom / personal responsibility. The price of freedom is responsibility. And if the outcome of ones actions are negative, then so be it. It may sound harsh, but I cannot accept the idea of the govt. curtailing (or attempting to curtail) my freedoms because somebody else might do something irresponsible and harm themselves (or even somebody else for that matter).
Not that I'm not sympathetic to people with various problems, such as gambling addiction, drug addiction, etc. But I'll choose how (if at all) I want to contribute to mitigating that problem, and not at the expense of my freedom as a sovereign individual.
The issue is not gambling. The issue is compliance with law.
Right, and the best way to deal with a bad law (defined as any law that inhibits your personal freedom to do anything you want other than
harming someone else or infringing on someone else's rights) is to ignore it.
and I don't advocate breaking the law
You should give it a try sometime. It's what all the cool kids are doing. Just don't hurt anybody else
or violate their rights.
YRO aside, it is currently illegal is gamble in most of the United States anyway, except certain states and indian reservations. So, in this case, I don't really feel that anyone's "rights" are being trampled
Rights do not depend on laws; either to grant said rights, nor can rights be revoked by law. If something is a right then it's something
you can do without asking anybody's permission, period. You can voluntary accept the authority of some entity (maybe called "government" or something) to restrict *your* rights if *you* want to, but don't make the mistake of assuming that govt. has any inate authority to restrict anyone else's rights.
As such, I will say that free people have a "right to gamble" and have most likely never granted the United States government - or any other government - any authority to restrict it. As far as I'm concerned, any law restricting gambling is invalid, null and void and should be ignored.
Basically it goes back to the old saw... "We have exactly as much freedom as we are willing to demand and as we can defend."