On Wed, 2002-11-06 at 15:22, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Of course, this definition exposes Microsoft's background assumption that selling
>software is
> always necessary for software businesses. But (to respond to Tony Leotta's posting)
>I think
> that part of the Open Source idea is that there is a business model involved in
>selling
> services around a product instead of selling the product itself. I gues the thought
>is that
> making a piece of software open source radically increases its exposure both to
>users and to
> developers. The latter then help to improve the quality of software, and the former
>pay you
> for integrators, consultants, etc. More to say here, of course, but this isn't an
>obviously dumb
> idea, is it?
I think this is the core of the argument. Many businesses have been
founded on the basis of selling the software itself but this is not the
only way.
Examples of companies selling on the back on open source software
include
RedHat - selling linux distributions and services around them but you
can still download them for free from their website.
Covalent - sell extensions and add-ons to Apache. Niche markets where
there is no real activity from open source developers.
Zend- selling services and software on the back of PHP.
All of them are reliant on the open source software being developed by a
group of people much larger than they could ever hope to employ
themselves.
To give this post a CMS slant, the market is still so young and
ill-defined that it is largely driven by corporate marketing departments
defining what a CMS is. As this settles down in the next couple of years
I expect to see open source CM systems overtaking many of the giant
monolithic systems where the ROI just doesn't justify the 6 or 7 figure
spends just to buy the software.
Buyers are more likely to spend their money on implementing the software
for best commercial gain where the ROI can be more easily quantified. I
believe that the market will be there for implementers, integrators and
other service providers to make money whilst the software is practically
free.
Just my 0.02s worth.
Simon Wilcox.
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