I'd have to second this opinion for the most part. A couple of years ago I was laid off from two jobs in succession (I maintain it was simply bad luck) and spent about six months looking for a job. During that time I would religiously check job websites, like Monster.com and Flipdog.com, every single day and apply for any job that I felt confident I could perform, anywhere in the United States. I must have applied for three or four hundred job positions, of which at least 80-90% I know I could have performed well. Out of all of those job applications, I only had one company look seriously at me. And both offers that I took (ending both unemployment periods), plus the only other competitive offer, were due to people who I knew getting my resume in front of the right person. None of these positions were advertised anywhere.
You said: "That being said, I'd like to understand how you're going to solve the problem of receiving payment for software?"
It really depends on your company and how you make money. If you use software in your business, you owe it to yourself to determine how it is that you make money. If your software is not a revenue generator, you may very likely benefit from opening source.
However, just because you actually do sell software doesn't mean that you can't benefit from open source. Of the software companies I've worked for, in at least two cases I can see that those things that secure the sale are services and support, not the software itself. If the main reason customers buy your software is because of your excellent support, you may have a case to open the source, even though you make money by selling the software that you are opening up.
There's no single answer for all companies, and there will be cases where it doesn't make business sense to open source (at least not yet). But I maintain that any company who develops software, whether to sell or for internal use, owes it to themselves to understand open source and investigate whether contributing could, in fact, be of a mutual benefit. They might be surprised at the result.
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I'd have to second this opinion for the most part. A couple of years ago I was laid off from two jobs in succession (I maintain it was simply bad luck) and spent about six months looking for a job. During that time I would religiously check job websites, like Monster.com and Flipdog.com, every single day and apply for any job that I felt confident I could perform, anywhere in the United States. I must have applied for three or four hundred job positions, of which at least 80-90% I know I could have performed well. Out of all of those job applications, I only had one company look seriously at me. And both offers that I took (ending both unemployment periods), plus the only other competitive offer, were due to people who I knew getting my resume in front of the right person. None of these positions were advertised anywhere.
You said: "That being said, I'd like to understand how you're going to solve the problem of receiving payment for software?"
It really depends on your company and how you make money. If you use software in your business, you owe it to yourself to determine how it is that you make money. If your software is not a revenue generator, you may very likely benefit from opening source.
However, just because you actually do sell software doesn't mean that you can't benefit from open source. Of the software companies I've worked for, in at least two cases I can see that those things that secure the sale are services and support, not the software itself. If the main reason customers buy your software is because of your excellent support, you may have a case to open the source, even though you make money by selling the software that you are opening up.
There's no single answer for all companies, and there will be cases where it doesn't make business sense to open source (at least not yet). But I maintain that any company who develops software, whether to sell or for internal use, owes it to themselves to understand open source and investigate whether contributing could, in fact, be of a mutual benefit. They might be surprised at the result.