well I rebutted your argument with the same force that you made it - I work for a company that does very well thanks on the support front. Its freaking hard work though, so in general I think you are right- but that doesn't mean its impossible. Revenue is certainly not a multiple of bodies in my experience.
Yes oracle did terribly - it was purely spite (or panache?) from Larry that drove it. Things are back to normal now, and everyone is friends. On Dec 19, 1:10 am, Joe Data <[email protected]> wrote: > On Dec 17, 5:50 pm, Michael Neale <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > The first two aren't really safe - look at Red Hat Enterprise Linux, > > > where you have a free, code-identical offering (CentOS) and somebody > > > else offering support at half of Red Hat's price (Oracle). > > > Ask Oracle how the sales are doing on that front. > > Ok, Oracle apparently failed to gain much traction here - > seehttp://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10108675-16.html. However, when > Springsource recently changed its maintenance policy to only publish > binaries to the open source community for three months after a major > release and to not tag the public CVS repository with the other, > enterprise-customer-only releases, Rod Johnson cited Oracle Linux > "cashing in in open source" as the specific example for not tagging > (http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss? > thread_id=50727#269625). They later changed that policy due to the PR > backlash. I think when you support a product whose roadmap somebody > else drives then you're always at a disadvantage, but if you're big > enough or just want to hurt the other guy, you may try nevertheless (I > think Oracle was just pissed at Red Hat for whatever reason). > > > > Apart from > > > that, support doesn't seem to be a great way to make money for open- > > > source companies, and it kinda sucks business-wise (revenue is a > > > multiple of your bodies, > > > Not true ! > > You really convinced me here. ;-) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
