So what's the beef if they GPL their code? Personally, I think they've come up with a pretty innovative business model and that they will de facto contribute to the advancement of OSS by being successful.
Sure, maybe RPM isn't the height of technical beauty, I'll bet your code is so perfect at ver 1.0 that no 2.0 is ever required.
I think it's great that they can provide an attractive enough working environment for their hackers that they can get them jazzed about working there.
I tend to agree because often times the choice of OS is not even there. We standardize our corporate boxes on W9* and NT because it's nearly impossible to retrain everyone to use new software. Windows is here for the long run in spite of it's technical "problems", because that's what they train B-school types to use. Might as well make it as solid as possible (though I've little enough hope for that).
*nix is great for those of us that need power and reliability (and don't mind the learning curve).
Admittedly my off-the-cuff example is probably not the best one. Don't really feel like having a seminar on markets and information - and suspect that/. readers might not be too interested in reading one. Your point often comes up in discussions on market structure and efficiency and all that. It's worth discussing to be sure, but the balance of opinion (at least the last time I looked) seemed to favor the point of view I tried to describe.
. . . are worth what people are willing to pay for them.
Not really. This statement relies on "perfect information" and "efficient markets" neither of which necessarily exist in this case. For instance I have three lottery tickets, one of which is a big winner and two of which are worthless. I know which is which, you don't. I'll sell you one and only one ticket. Are you really going to pay 1/3 the value of the winner (your expected value)? Probably not. Imperfect information and risk aversion tend to make you offer less than the expected value of the item.
In "markets" for domain names the buyer may be less sophisticated than the seller. After all - the seller was savvy enough to jump on the domain right? The buyer may well be concerned about being taken advantage of (information asymmetry). Without complete information "efficient markets" can't really exist.
Yeah, the Ph.D. is a big mistake. All the fellow students in the program I attended realized this at about the time when it seemed that we had too much invested (in time and effort) to quit. I guess some Ph.D. programs are better than others, but 95% of the grads I know (more than a few) agree that it was more trouble than it's worth (unless you plan on teaching at the university level where it's generally a requirement).
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So what's the beef if they GPL their code? Personally, I think they've come up with a pretty innovative business model and that they will de facto contribute to the advancement of OSS by being successful.
Sure, maybe RPM isn't the height of technical beauty, I'll bet your code is so perfect at ver 1.0 that no 2.0 is ever required.
I think it's great that they can provide an attractive enough working environment for their hackers that they can get them jazzed about working there.
I tend to agree because often times the choice of OS is not even there. We standardize our corporate boxes on W9* and NT because it's nearly impossible to retrain everyone to use new software. Windows is here for the long run in spite of it's technical "problems", because that's what they train B-school types to use. Might as well make it as solid as possible (though I've little enough hope for that).
*nix is great for those of us that need power and reliability (and don't mind the learning curve).
diatribe? point of view maybe.
/. readers might not be too interested in reading one. Your point often comes up in discussions on market structure and efficiency and all that. It's worth discussing to be sure, but the balance of opinion (at least the last time I looked) seemed to favor the point of view I tried to describe.
Admittedly my off-the-cuff example is probably not the best one. Don't really feel like having a seminar on markets and information - and suspect that
Regards
. . . are worth what people are willing to pay for them.
Not really. This statement relies on "perfect information" and "efficient markets" neither of which necessarily exist in this case. For instance I have three lottery tickets, one of which is a big winner and two of which are worthless. I know which is which, you don't. I'll sell you one and only one ticket. Are you really going to pay 1/3 the value of the winner (your expected value)? Probably not. Imperfect information and risk aversion tend to make you offer less than the expected value of the item.
In "markets" for domain names the buyer may be less sophisticated than the seller. After all - the seller was savvy enough to jump on the domain right? The buyer may well be concerned about being taken advantage of (information asymmetry). Without complete information "efficient markets" can't really exist.
IMNSHO
;-)
Yeah, the Ph.D. is a big mistake. All the fellow students in the program I attended realized this at about the time when it seemed that we had too much invested (in time and effort) to quit. I guess some Ph.D. programs are better than others, but 95% of the grads I know (more than a few) agree that it was more trouble than it's worth (unless you plan on teaching at the university level where it's generally a requirement).
Good Luck