How Can Companies Profit While Giving Code Away? 240
An anonymous reader writes "In an almost philosophical essay replete with references to everyone from Larry Lessig and Tim Bray to to Professor Yochai Benkler, Sun Micrososystems evangelist Simon Phipps explores the metaphor of subscription (well, of course it's not just a metaphor any more from Sun's point of view) as the way that companies will make money off of deploying open source solutions. His distinction between OS developer and OS deployer is useful, but the crux is his contention that, with a "system" such as Sun has put together like the JDS, 'You don't buy the software from Sun - instead you subscribe to the editorial outlook.' It's an alluring analogy - Sun as the editor-in-chief of a 'publication' (JDS) with readers who may or may not choose to subscribe. Worth reading."
How Can Companies Profit While Giving Code Away? (Score:5, Informative)
Sun's not the only one (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How Can Companies Profit While Giving Code Away (Score:3, Informative)
One way, which my company is doing it is by giving away source code of components that plug in to our services system. What you are really buying from us is infrastructure, management, and time.
We are expecting that many people will build their own systems but that is OK, we dont need to be a monopoly, we just have to offer value to customers such that the say its worth the money.
Re:interesting (Score:5, Informative)
No, that's not how it works. You subscribe to Sun's software, and you get new releases on a quarterly basis. If you cancel you still keep the software, but you don't get anymore updates.
You're confusing subscription with "maintenance" contracts.
Re:Um, okay Sun... (Score:3, Informative)
Weak analogy, does Sun really get it? (Score:2, Informative)
This article gives me the impression that Sun is still clinging to control of the commit mechanism as a way to exercise ultimate authority over the community. In contrast, if you read interviews with Linus Torvalds, he is usually very careful to express how limited his control is, downplaying the fact that he holds the ulimate "commit" keys, and emphasizing that his true power comes from the amount of respect he has earned (and is able to sustain) from his fellow kernel developers.
Pennies worth (Score:5, Informative)
Of course support can be expensive, but that's only for corporate customers, and even then many free apps can be "supported" by googling for info. What kind of questions about Firefox are worth $100 a pop?
Let's just accept that most free software is written as a hobby, as an academic project or for personal use. Linus didn't set out to make great riches, and as far as I know he didn't. If you are trying to make money off either free [sun.com] or pay [sco.com] software that other people are willing to write and maintain as a hobby, well you should have known better.