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I was going to write this comment but you did it already. ;) Another common criticism of OSS goes along the lines of "it does not monetize value fully." In oth

I was going to write this comment but you did it already. ;) Another common criticism of OSS goes along the lines of "it does not monetize value fully." In other words it creates value but the authors don't collect on it completely. However, the same statement is true of proprietary software. Anybody who has sold proprietary products knows that what you recover is a fraction of the cost of your users doing it themselves. It might be a bigger fraction than OSS but not always--maybe you don't even get the sale in the first place because users are afraid of lock-in. It's therefore quite misleading to think in terms of different economic models for OSS and proprietary-based businesses. There are more points in common than differences.

aidenn0 8y ago
The problem is that the "cost of doing it themselves" for OSS is downloading and building your source, whereas for proprietary software, it's the cost of writing it.
- hodgesrm 8y ago
  It really depends on the software in question. I work on DBMS. The cost of doing it yourself is potentially much higher than your comment indicates: * Time-to-market -- Rework due to mistakes when implementing or deploying applications * Risk -- Fixing problems may take [much] longer than for supported software * Resources -- Extra personnel to do software support and maintenance. This gets a lot more painful once software is long in the tooth and no longer cool to work on. None of these have anything to do with OSS in particular. And for many people the costs are outweighed by benefits like understanding the technology stack and not being in thrall to costs they can't control. In a similar vein I used to fix cars myself. I now take them to the mechanic even though for many problems I could do a better job albeit at a high cost of time, parts, and tools. It's cheaper to focus on work that I'm good at. I still miss car mechanics though.
  - aidenn0 8y ago
    All of those costs are orthogonal to OSS vs proprietary software. For example, there is commercially supported OSS software and completely unsupported proprietary software.

aidenn0 8y ago

The problem is that the "cost of doing it themselves" for OSS is downloading and building your source, whereas for proprietary software, it's the cost of writing it.

hodgesrm 8y ago
It really depends on the software in question. I work on DBMS. The cost of doing it yourself is potentially much higher than your comment indicates: * Time-to-market -- Rework due to mistakes when implementing or deploying applications * Risk -- Fixing problems may take [much] longer than for supported software * Resources -- Extra personnel to do software support and maintenance. This gets a lot more painful once software is long in the tooth and no longer cool to work on. None of these have anything to do with OSS in particular. And for many people the costs are outweighed by benefits like understanding the technology stack and not being in thrall to costs they can't control. In a similar vein I used to fix cars myself. I now take them to the mechanic even though for many problems I could do a better job albeit at a high cost of time, parts, and tools. It's cheaper to focus on work that I'm good at. I still miss car mechanics though.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  All of those costs are orthogonal to OSS vs proprietary software. For example, there is commercially supported OSS software and completely unsupported proprietary software.