What is Digg?115 Comments
- mahadiga, on 10/14/2008, -8/+60Red Cross Is No Longer a Viable Business
- turoczy, on 10/14/2008, -2/+49Based on the price of that report, I'd say that the business model for Open Source is in writing reports about Open Source. ;)
- wminzlaff, on 10/14/2008, -8/+48Firefox > IE
Not the first or last time open source has/will win. - inactive, on 10/14/2008, -7/+40stop thinking about open source as the product, but rather the platform, then everything should click into place you mindless dimwits.
Most of you still have underdeveloped neanderthal brains, so let me illuminate you with a very crude analogy:
a shopping center doesn't make money being a shopping center, it makes money leasing out property to merchants -- it's an enabler! - MinibossMike, on 10/14/2008, -8/+36Let me guess, Report sponsored by Microsoft?
- LastDitchHero, on 10/15/2008, -1/+23wminzlaff, can I get the source code for the google search? Can I get the source for all the rest of google's products?
- Benjigga, on 10/14/2008, -1/+23I think the argument is that open source isn't profitable for developmental businesses, not which is better. The future of open source won't be in the business world. It will always depend on independent non-profit programmers.
- nrox653, on 10/14/2008, -2/+18Well then, I guess every non-profit organization will go down the drain. Boohoo.
Buried for blog cruft. - Elranzer, on 10/15/2008, -2/+15Why don't you ask RedHat and Novell?
- cubicledrone, on 10/15/2008, -3/+15Apache.
NEXT - PikeUK, on 10/15/2008, -0/+12No, Firefox is a web browser.
Mozilla (the company) is a for-profit corporation 100% owned by a not-for-profit charitable foundation. - inactive, on 10/14/2008, -3/+14I think Open Source is a great thing but I don't believe that it is a viable business platform for everyone. If all companies went open source, would everyone still be able to make a sustainable amount of money? As nice as free products sound, people have to keep roofs over their heads and food to support their families.
A lot of the things we have today are luxuries anyway -- why shouldn't we pay for them? If a business can make Open Source work for them then awesome, if not, fine by me. - akkibaba, on 10/15/2008, -3/+12LAMP, bitches.
- djphatjive, on 10/15/2008, -0/+8Firefox gets Buckets of money from Google. Without them they would be not around I'm sure. I use firefox and have been for years but have never given them a dime. Except for searching with Google.
- EasySt, on 10/14/2008, -1/+9Chumby is making a go of it. Cool product, too!
http://www.chumby.com - Yazilliclick, on 10/15/2008, -1/+9Google is ad supported software. Not open source.
- inactive, on 10/15/2008, -1/+8"The resulting 71 page report is being sold for $3750 and our requests for press access have not been replied to by press time."
Talking ***** about open-source *is*, however, a viable business model. - uncleosbert, on 10/15/2008, -3/+10we should be careful building systems exclusively off monetary concerns. look at the way diebold has inserted themselves into our elections, and the insurance companies inserted themselves into medicine. i don't think they're improving things for users, though the profits are impressive.
and given what is happening to our currency, i think there's value in making good tools when there's no money in it. think the guy who invented fire charged people?
from a design standpoint, incorporating user content increases robustness of systems. compare napster to itunes, or firefox to ie, or wikipedia to knol. there is no comparison from a user's standpoint. and one of those tools was so awesome the government made it illegal to protect the record companies and the mpaa. no, they aren't all open source, but they are all driven by desire for something besides profit. - kero552, on 10/15/2008, -1/+8Wireshark, Blender, DosBox, MPlayer, VLC player, Miranda, TrueCrypt, Python? I am not sure if they are business failures, but they are neat pieces of software.
- joshwehatetech, on 10/15/2008, -0/+7They sell services and expensive hardware. Support is a part of that, but don't be fooled where the real money is at.
- RangerRick, on 10/15/2008, -0/+6I work for OpenNMS:
http://www.opennms.com/
...and we are *gasp* profitable, and make our money entirely on custom development and support. Every customer who has paid us to develop a feature for OpenNMS has OK'd putting it back into the open-source product, and they've been better for it.
For example, we have a customer who contracted some custom development 6 years ago. They've been running on the original branch we implemented that feature, and finally switched to our latest version a few months ago. In all that time, OpenNMS has changed a *ton*, but since we have unit tests and such, and since the community helps find bugs, the feature we developed for them still worked without any changes. If you did the same "custom development" for OpenView or one of the other network management tools, good luck having everything work out of the box after a major version upgrade.
In the end, everyone wins: the customer gets the features they need without having the cost of fixing bit-rotten code on version upgrades, and the community gets new features donated by customers who pay us to essentially accelerate our roadmap in a specific direction that they need.
We don't do the "shareware open-source" crap where we put out a crippled/less-featured version and charge license or per-node fees for the "enterprise" version, instead everyone gets the enterprise version for free.
"Open Source" is certainly not a business model, it's just a way of doing development, but from a ideological point of view, doing business as a pure open-source company means the software should be free to be developed and improved by the community, without some kind of conflict-of-interest with the "commercial" business doing upsells of proprietary addons.
According to some of the comments on the readwriteweb.com article, that's what the 451 group meant, but in the end, the title of the article is misleading if that's really the case. But hey, I guess it worked, they got dugg up. ;) - hamobu, on 10/15/2008, -0/+6Open source is a software development methodology and not a business strategy.
- lacronicus, on 10/15/2008, -1/+7Redhat, novell, and apache all offer support to large corporations in return for payment. They can succeed because those large corporations *need* support for their software.
For consumer applications, such as games, web browsers, etc, that is not the case. - exeprime, on 10/15/2008, -0/+5And your reply proves your ignorance. Open source was never meant to be a "business model" either.
It's more of an... idea, if you will. The idea that information should be free. - suckanucka, on 10/15/2008, -0/+5You can't apply a blanket statement to the profitability of in open source software development.
- arjie, on 10/15/2008, -0/+5This is a question easily answered by: http://www.top500.org/stats/list/31/os
But it can also be answered with more sense by other means: I would never have gotten into playing around with code without open source software. There's so much stuff you can get for free, all that learning, all just there for you. Similar things like the Creative Commons have documentation, pictures, music all for free! You can't believe how much the Free philosophy has added to the lives of intelligent people interested in computers.
Imagine you want to be an artist, and suddenly someone gives you as many canvases as you want, as many paints and brushes and tools. You're limited only by your imagination and your talent, not by your ability to obtain your tools.
So even if no open source project ever becomes highly used with the masses, free software, open source and similar philosophies will have won a much bigger victory. It's not all about market share. - inactive, on 10/15/2008, -1/+6neither is the UN
- greevar, on 10/15/2008, -0/+5I was thinking exactly the same thing. In addition, I think the whole conclusion of the paper was a FUD attack to scare vendors into buying the report in the first place.
- wminzlaff, on 10/15/2008, -2/+7Intelligence.
McDonalds isn't in the hamburger business, its in the real estate business. It owns property on virtually ever corner in every city in almost every country. - JQP123, on 10/15/2008, -4/+9"Red Cross Is No Longer a Viable Business"
Red Cross is not and never was a "business" ... it's a charity organization. The number of diggs you've received suggests that quite a few diggers don't even know what "business" means. - mcrules, on 10/15/2008, -1/+5If you bought the book "The cathedral and the bazaar", that question is answered in minute detail. Basically he states that software engineering is a service industry masquerading as a manufacturing one!
Read the damn book.. you'll understand (and agree). - inactive, on 10/15/2008, -2/+6That's actually true.
- hamobu, on 10/15/2008, -2/+6reality is proving you wrong
- joe7845, on 10/15/2008, -0/+4Very few open source applications can make a significant amount of money. But then, a lot of low-end open source is not built to make money.
- jonshipman, on 10/15/2008, -1/+4Except for where they rent..
- sjmulder, on 10/15/2008, -0/+3Okay I think it's clear you can make money supporting open operating systems.
But how do you make money from open source consumer apps and games? - shutaro, on 10/15/2008, -3/+6Not economically viable!
- Lounger540, on 10/15/2008, -2/+5They aren't turning a profit on real estate until they liquidate them. Until then it's costing them property taxes, utilities, insurance, and also grounds maintenance.
Their cash flow is in hamburgers. Their assets are in land. - greevar, on 10/15/2008, -0/+3McDonalds isn't in the hamburger business. They are in the fast/convenient food service. Hot, fast, and tasty is the mantra of Micky D's.
- familynight, on 10/15/2008, -3/+6It's a typo. And if your comment were open source, I could have fixed it.
- AltF3, on 10/15/2008, -1/+4Poor article written by someone who doesn't understand the subject, buried.
- inactive, on 10/15/2008, -0/+3That's opinion, and other than firefox, please name at least twenty MAIN STREAM open source applications are better (more users, makes more money, etc.) then their closed source counterpart.
Are there 20 open source applications that are main stream? I mean, a typical office worker has heard of or used it either at home or work. - LastDitchHero, on 10/15/2008, -2/+5As much as I love Open Source it doesn't make sense in all instances. Say I own a real estate company and I develop internally a web product that allows me to show case my real estate properties, that would be a good candidate for open source as it is not my primary business activity. Now lets say I have software that searches property and finds deals, that will not be open sourced and may not even be for use outside my company as that would affect my primary business activity.
Now for software companies, open source only makes sense if you have dual licensing like troll tech or cygwin from Red Hat. Unless you product is server based then you can do whatever the hell you want like Google but then in reality you are more of a service provider who can bring unique products to the table (google apps for domains). - Rudegar, on 10/15/2008, -0/+3many non open source company's make most their profit on maintenance of their software solutions so i cant see why the same would not hold true for open source
sure the customers could hire programmers to do the maintenance themselves but most would not and that would be a continuance expense - Stonekeeper, on 10/15/2008, -0/+2Thanks for openNMS. It's awesome!
- LowFuel, on 10/15/2008, -0/+2So the business model is to make free software, and charge morons for it?
- MrSelfDestruct, on 10/15/2008, -0/+2Common sense says that "Income" is pretty important if you have a business.
- Mistlefoot, on 10/15/2008, -0/+2I can cook. I cook quite well actually. And I have a full fridge. I use "open source" techniques to cook. But I also buy recipe books. And prepared foods. And eat at restaurants.
Anyone with a kitchen and some food has the ability to make meals based on techniques and recipes that other's have created. Most don't want to spend the time to learn and just cook 'basi' meals. And most, like me, enjoy a frozen meal or box of "Uncle Ben's" rice often. And dare I mention going out for coffee. Coffee is nearly free at home but I enjoy coffee out.
Food providers have provided many options for people. Countless.
Open Source software is any many ways similar. People will always look for "store bought" solutions to their software needs. They will also utilize free options - you can't afford to eat every meal out! Companies will also find a way to profit from the options people choose. - dncarlson, on 10/15/2008, -0/+2Not Economically Viable
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_ZWWTqbJI4 - Matt2k, on 10/15/2008, -0/+2I'm pretty sure it can be both.
Despite what the book may say. -
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