What I find interesting about the LRP experience is that many, if not most, of the SOHO Firewall/Router devices out there are based on this guy's code. It's ironic that millions of these devices have been sold, but the developer who not dreamed it up but was actually able to create the code, has to give up the development of software because he doesn't make any money at it. I have to wonder if he had not released his code under GPL and instead made it available as say shareware or even freeware (without the source), what would have happened?
His product was great and really marketed itself. His problem is that he had no mechanism to get paid for his brilliant Intellectual Property which he neglected to protect, because he released his product as Open Source. The large companies then took the code, built products, sold them, and he didn't see a dime. Bummer. He also discovered that trying to earn a living as just a programmer doing "piece-work" is not really feasible. Steven B. Tomlinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pacific Telehealth and Technology Hui www.PacificHui.org > -----Original Message----- > From: Ignacio Valdes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 1:38 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: The rewards of contributing to the OpenSource Community > > > I lost about $10,000 on a 100% proprietary Windows and Mac based > commercial software that I wrote in the early 1990's that actually > sold tens of thousands of copies. It just didn't sell enough to cover > the cost of development (around 50,000 copies to break even). This is > not the fault of the proprietary software model any more than LRP was > a casualty of FOSS model. The lesson I learned from my experience was > that I needed to put 50% of the money in development and 50% in the > marketing instead of 90% of the money into development. > > -- IV > > On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 17:30:35 -0600 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >http://www.linuxrouter.org/ > > > > > > > >Steven B. Tomlinson > >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Pacific Telehealth and Technology Hui > >www.PacificHui.org > > > > > > > > <<Tomlinson, Steven B.vcf>> >
Tomlinson, Steven B.vcf
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