Re: [ba-ohs-talk] Bootstrap and Licensing
James Michael DuPont wrote: (01)
> ...Look at mp3.com
> that uses linux/php/apache to run a non-free service. (02)
Interestingly, the issue of funding the folks who develop
the OHS tool set is still open. Here's why: (03)
* Foks who do for-profit fundiing won't be interested in
funding the software that prospective competition can
use to get into the business. (04)
* The outfit that uses the OHS, therefore, will depend for
competetive advantage on the amount of data they have
amassed, and the "snowball effect" derived from having
a lot of users on board before any competition shows up. (05)
* That outfit's expenses will therefore need to be heavily
devoted to amassing data, attracting users, and
providing whatever services or facilities it needs to
provide to keep them interested. (06)
Mp3.com may be good example of a funded, profitable
company that uses open software. But I wonder:
* How much time and effort they spend on improving
the open source.
* How profitable they are.
* How much funding they were able to attract. (07)
(I ask these questions in all ignorance. The answers will
help to determine how realistic a model this may be.
However, even with the *best* answers, I think they
would have found it impossible to attract any funding
whatever, had their goal been to develop linux or apache
in order to establish their business.) (08)
As we have observed in the past, open source tends to
do well when it consists of incremental modifications to
an existing system, but not for developing new systems. (09)
I expect that is entirely do, once again, to the chicken and
egg problem: We don't have the online collaboration tools
we need to collaborate remotely on the design of an
online remote collaboration system! (010)
Existing messaging systems support high level thinking and
strategizing like this, but they quickly bog down when we
attempt to sort out the details. (011)