If they get a few big guys like Google and Yahoo to favor IPv6 hosted content over IPv4 when it comes to page rank, I think you would see a mad scramble to IPv6 with customers placing a crushing amount of pressure on their providers to get them a presence on IPv6. Not sure if I understand it right, but I *think* its not too difficult to serve content on both address spaces simultaneously?

If you jump off the roof of your house, you will hit the ground. If you have a really expensive house with like 5 stories, or a penthouse on 5th avenue, it may take you longer to hit the ground, but eventually.... splat.

You can create giant planet-sized data stores and find things in them with an RDBMS, its just not cheap or fast. I am not bashing NoSQL as a data store, I am pointing out that it's query language is not what makes it powerful. It's query language is limited compared to SQL, a compromise to be able to do queries that scale across many machines.

From what I have learned about the uses for and abilities of NoSQL, its a compromise you make when affordable scalability is required to stay in business. It is nowhere near as powerful as the RDBMS/SQL combination, however it is much cheaper to run. Don't believe anyone who tries to tell you there are things you can do with NoSQL that you can't do with SQL. That is complete bunk. Maybe it makes speed cheaper, and scaling easier, but those decisions should be forced by application demand and budget constraints, not application design. I am most interested in NoSQL as a way to store denormalized data in a pre-cache for light write, heavy read applications. Any other use would probably be due to desperation to scale to keep up with demand.

Whatever kind of question it is does not change the risk involved in trying to profit from software, or any product for that matter. I would argue that the time invested to write the software is the same for either case. You are also gambling that someone will want to pay for your closed source software.

You asked a marketing question that I don't really know how to answer. I make a full time living as a contractor developing and maintaining free open source software. All of my revenue comes from companies who find my code useful and are willing to pay for access to my talent to add features, fix bugs, give support, etc. I am not listed in the phone book, I don't pay for any advertising, etc. Free stuff gets around quickly and people seek me out.

Distribution is only part of it. The freedom to modify software that you rely on to perform your task better is what is at stake. Just like you have the freedom to modify your car to perform better.

Free as in free to turn you car in to a hot rod and re-sell it to someone else if you feel like it. Closed source software is a car with the hood welded shut that you aren't allowed to fix if the engine dies, or resell if you need the money to buy movie tickets.

Its kind of like owning a luxury car. You still get from A to B, but you feel better than everyone else because you wasted your money.

I don't get spam from Chase, but a ton from Capital One. Is that the one you meant?