3 ms·

The open-source entrepreneur

47 points by bensummers 16y ago

10ren 16y ago
More power to Redhat and the value in open source. No need to oversell: Today, the Redmond giant has seen its market share erode; Red Hat has become the world's open-source leader. Microsoft profit: $14,569 million http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT&fstype=ii http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT&fstype=ii Redhat profit: $87.25 million http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:RHT&fstype=ii http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:RHT&fstype=ii
- rwmj 16y ago
  Bob Young notably said: "One of the ideas behind Red Hat is to take a $10 billion market and turn it into a $10 million market". His point being that hiding the source creates the inefficiency of having to get every little bug and feature fixed by the one company that has access to the secret source. This inefficiency is lucrative if you're that one company, but a vast drag on the economy for everyone else.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    It's very easy to see this as the destruction of value. Microsoft, certainly, pushes this interpretation. Another way to see is that it's taking 10 billion out of the cost of doing business. Those 10 billion will be translate into more R&D, greener manufacturing or lower prices.
mapleoin 16y ago
Mr Young sold the software as fast as Mr Ewing could produce it. Is this a metaphor gone wrong or just English humor?
- bensummers 16y ago
  I don't think it's English humour. Probably a journalist not understanding the subject.
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
>Last year, Lulu created 400,000 titles and sold over 1.6 million books So Lulu sold an average of four copies per title? I'd be interested to see a chart of sales by title - I'm guessing it would be the mother of all zipf distributions.
- mhd 16y ago
  A lot of Lulu customers don't market their books, they just use the service to print private copies of family memoirs, documentation or other one-off products. No break-out hits that I'm aware of. Some indy RPG publishers sell reasonable numbers. Wil Wheaton's book ran pretty well...
- jgrahamc 16y ago
  I agree, it's likely a power law of some kind. My book about GNU Make (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/gnu-make-unleashed/2937580 http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/gnu-make-unleashed/293...) has sold a healthy 80 copies.
c00p3r 16y ago
The winner writes history. As I remember it could be described much simpler - 'we found a way how to monetize open source OS and powerful friends to promote us (read: IBM) and arrange our IPO (big money)'. Some might think after reading this article that Java was really open source at that time. It wasn't until 2007, when everyone realized that the hype started to decline. And it wasn't a part of RHEL/CentOS until 2008.

47 points by bensummers 16y ago

10ren 16y ago

More power to Redhat and the value in open source. No need to oversell: Today, the Redmond giant has seen its market share erode; Red Hat has become the world's open-source leader. Microsoft profit: $14,569 million http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT&fstype=ii http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT&fstype=ii Redhat profit: $87.25 million http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:RHT&fstype=ii http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:RHT&fstype=ii

rwmj 16y ago
Bob Young notably said: "One of the ideas behind Red Hat is to take a $10 billion market and turn it into a $10 million market". His point being that hiding the source creates the inefficiency of having to get every little bug and feature fixed by the one company that has access to the secret source. This inefficiency is lucrative if you're that one company, but a vast drag on the economy for everyone else.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  It's very easy to see this as the destruction of value. Microsoft, certainly, pushes this interpretation. Another way to see is that it's taking 10 billion out of the cost of doing business. Those 10 billion will be translate into more R&D, greener manufacturing or lower prices.

mapleoin 16y ago

Mr Young sold the software as fast as Mr Ewing could produce it. Is this a metaphor gone wrong or just English humor?

bensummers 16y ago
I don't think it's English humour. Probably a journalist not understanding the subject.

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

>Last year, Lulu created 400,000 titles and sold over 1.6 million books So Lulu sold an average of four copies per title? I'd be interested to see a chart of sales by title - I'm guessing it would be the mother of all zipf distributions.

mhd 16y ago
A lot of Lulu customers don't market their books, they just use the service to print private copies of family memoirs, documentation or other one-off products. No break-out hits that I'm aware of. Some indy RPG publishers sell reasonable numbers. Wil Wheaton's book ran pretty well...
jgrahamc 16y ago
I agree, it's likely a power law of some kind. My book about GNU Make (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/gnu-make-unleashed/2937580 http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/gnu-make-unleashed/293...) has sold a healthy 80 copies.

c00p3r 16y ago

The winner writes history. As I remember it could be described much simpler - 'we found a way how to monetize open source OS and powerful friends to promote us (read: IBM) and arrange our IPO (big money)'. Some might think after reading this article that Java was really open source at that time. It wasn't until 2007, when everyone realized that the hype started to decline. And it wasn't a part of RHEL/CentOS until 2008.