Matthias Pfützner wrote:
You (James Mansion) wrote:
if you look at Sun's annual earnings documents, you might notice, that most of
Sun's revenue and especially margin was generated by big iron hardware.
Indeed I had.
And the money coming in from software was mostly licebnses to OEMs (think
Java), as far as those numbers have ever been published. So, I'm a bit
interpreting stuff here.
I agree. And I think that revenue did not improve materially from open
sourcing that IP - while the move to open source surely gives up a
degree of control.
apps. And, yes, that worked! Not in the way many hoped it would, but yes, it
generated more mind-share, and with that additional HW-sales.
Microsoft have never had a problem with ISV mindshare because they made
things cheap and accessible. Free is just one form of cheap from that
perspective. I absolutely believe that Microsoft's success is not nearly
so much related to monopolistic practices as to their early ability to
court ISVs and their ability to use ABIs (like VBXs and OLE controls) to
create a marketplace for small ISVs. Microsoft took their eye off that
ball a few years back but they seem to have recovered.
Maybe I'm just an old fart but I recall my dismay at the Byte headlines
that OO had failed and components had won. I was an early C++ adopter
and it was galling - because it was true. How many businesses ever got
anywhere with aftermarket controls on any of the X toolkits? Maybe Qt
will create an ecosystem - I don't know. But I think the lesson was that
open standards don't create that sort of ISV-friendly environment on
their own and the existence of such a market does wonders. Look at the
iPhone app shop. Same thing again.
So, Oracle now is the second biggest SW-company of the world, they KNOW how to
monetize SW, and I hope and am sure, we will see some big monetizations coming
out of the assest that Oracle got with the acquisition of Sun. And that in
turn will again allow to let OpenSolaris live as well as Java. Larry stated it
cleary: "It's not needed to produce margin or revenue directly, as long as it
helps generate revenue and margin over-all!"
Well, I hope so. I really want Solaris and Java to survive and thrive -
hopefully in a form that I can afford. I don't want or need the source
code for that to happen and I don't believe anyone outside of Oracle
really needs it either - I think 'free as in beer' is enough, though as
I've said to Martin its advantageous if the delivery is in a form that
allows custom distributions to be created. Time was we all linked our
kernels from objects, what was wrong with that? Modularity is the key -
not an ability to run cc. And personally I'm entirely happy to pay (a
modest amount) for security fixes and upgrades.
I'm not questioning whether its worthwhile courting a hobbyist or SME
market or even universities. I *am* questioning whether the full monty
open source is necessary - or particularly helpful for long term
viability, given what the release costs you.
James
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