On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Rufus Pollock <[email protected]>wrote:
> On 15 April 2011 14:42, Jo Walsh <[email protected]> wrote: > [...] > > But the only example i've got of a really successful business built on > > open data is Cloudmade - which sells custom hosted services based on > > OpenStreetmap data. There must be quite a few others? So i am looking > > for: > > > > * examples of a successful 'business' sustainability model based on open > data > > * more suggestions for how ORCID specifically could raise revenue > > while opening all data > > > This is a critically important issue - I have asked a number of people how to sustain Open Source (in the general sense) in science. Historically companies such as Cygnus and Redhat did this *in the ICT arena* and Open Source + chargeable services is now very common there . I have struggled to find things in non-ICT vertical domains. An early example was Lion Bioscience selling repackaged genome and realted data and tools. But it didn't work out (not necessarily because of a bad model). However it's startiing to happen. One of our collaborators in the Blue Obelisk Open Source chemistry community ( http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/blueobelisk/index.php?title=Main_Page) is Marcus Hanwell (copied). who works for a company Kitware( http://www.kitware.com/ ) selling Open Source services for visualization and related areas (not just chemistry). Marcus is himself the guru/Doctor_Who of Avogadro - a beautiful open Source molecular visualizer ( http://avogadro.openmolecules.net/wiki/Main_Page ). Anything that the OKF can do to highlight this and collect examples will be really valuable. Creating a revenue stream out of Open Knowledge is really important. I have lived through decades where a walled-garden program could make lots of money because of novelty value and control. I really liked "make a living not a killing" - that's a great mantra. P. -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069
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