2 ms·
The premise doesn't make sense to me. Open source is a business model, not a technology. How do you build a "hub" out of that? I think you are arguing that fam
by neilk 16y ago
The premise doesn't make sense to me. Open source is a business model, not a technology. How do you build a "hub" out of that?
I think you are arguing that familiarity with the business model is transferable across organizations, but that seems dubious. At least so far, there has never been a "hub" based on an investing or management talent pool. It's always been based on the employee talent pool -- for the Bay Area, electronics and software.
FYI, I'm a Montrealer by birth, San Franciscan by choice.
- evanprodromou 16y agoHey. I grew up in SF, moved to Montreal in 2002. So, you know, we probably crossed around Iowa City or so. There's a lot to unpack in your comment. Is there enough similarity between Open Source companies that they will benefit from being near other OSS companies? I think so, for a few reasons. 1. Local investors will have experience with Open Source (we've seen this here in Montreal; our big seed investor MSU has invested in 3 OSS companies). 2. Local service providers (accountants, lawyers, consultants) are aware of and can work with Open Source business models, licenses, etc. 3. A pool of business talent -- people who know how to commercialize Open Source. 4. A pool of Open-Source-sensitive technical talent. It's hard to make Open Source work from a technical level. Some people have the chops for it -- others don't. The ones who do a good job make it look easy; and then there's the hundreds of thousands of 1-person projects on sourceforge.net. I think that making a successful Open Source company is as different from making a shrink-wrap software company as making a Web company is. It's a sufficiently different model that you have to have a much different team to pursue it.