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Huh? You exchanged your domain expertise (i.e., your knowledge of a specialized piece of information) to make their system of vending goods work better. I'm _qu

Huh? You exchanged your domain expertise (i.e., your knowledge of a specialized piece of information) to make their system of vending goods work better. I'm _quite sure_ they would compensate you for this. See? Boom, information for capital. It's the future, folks. That's what this entire site is about.

brc 16y ago
No, you exchanged skills for capital. Otherwise known as a job. The information on patching an open source webserver is freely available. The skill (and available time) is what people will pay for. It's not the same thing as paying for information. It's hard to get people to pay for information. Paywall sites generally struggle unless they can find some information that gives an advantage, but then, the presentation talks about the value of free and open information, which nobody will pay for. No-one is doubting that much of the activity on this site isn't important, or exciting. Just that it's wise to take a dose of reality along with the hype, otherwise you'll end up with sock puppet marketing all over again. Maybe you weren't part of the industry when it all went down the first time, but I still cringe at the billions of dollars wasted on business plans and ideas with no basis on reality, some of which quite openly stated that the 'old' economy was no longer worth anything at all.
- muhfuhkuh 16y ago
  "but then, the presentation talks about the value of free and open information, which nobody will pay for." Red Hat trades and works quite freely in open source software. It's information is out there for everyone to use, change, fork, recompile, remarket, etc (for example, CentOS for a free alternative or Oracle's Unbreakable Linux for pay). They're heading toward a billion dollars in revenue, probably within 3-5 years, and are continually profitable.
  - brc 16y ago
    You are not getting my point, so I'll try from another angle. My final post on the matter. Open source software is not information. It's software. It's a product. Red Hat get paid for delivering a product, the value is in their expertise and promise to deliver something. Maybe we disagree as to what constitutes what information is - fine - but all of my statements are to do with information, not software. To me information is what goes into the database, not what it runs on.

brc 16y ago

No, you exchanged skills for capital. Otherwise known as a job. The information on patching an open source webserver is freely available. The skill (and available time) is what people will pay for. It's not the same thing as paying for information. It's hard to get people to pay for information. Paywall sites generally struggle unless they can find some information that gives an advantage, but then, the presentation talks about the value of free and open information, which nobody will pay for. No-one is doubting that much of the activity on this site isn't important, or exciting. Just that it's wise to take a dose of reality along with the hype, otherwise you'll end up with sock puppet marketing all over again. Maybe you weren't part of the industry when it all went down the first time, but I still cringe at the billions of dollars wasted on business plans and ideas with no basis on reality, some of which quite openly stated that the 'old' economy was no longer worth anything at all.

muhfuhkuh 16y ago
"but then, the presentation talks about the value of free and open information, which nobody will pay for." Red Hat trades and works quite freely in open source software. It's information is out there for everyone to use, change, fork, recompile, remarket, etc (for example, CentOS for a free alternative or Oracle's Unbreakable Linux for pay). They're heading toward a billion dollars in revenue, probably within 3-5 years, and are continually profitable.
- brc 16y ago
  You are not getting my point, so I'll try from another angle. My final post on the matter. Open source software is not information. It's software. It's a product. Red Hat get paid for delivering a product, the value is in their expertise and promise to deliver something. Maybe we disagree as to what constitutes what information is - fine - but all of my statements are to do with information, not software. To me information is what goes into the database, not what it runs on.