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It sounds to me like you are imputing motives unsupported by this particular example. First, Marco pretty explicitly said he wasn't in favor of regulation:
by wonderzombie 14y ago
It sounds to me like you are imputing motives unsupported by this particular example.
First, Marco pretty explicitly said he wasn't in favor of regulation:
Much of our rapid progress wouldn’t have happened if we had to play by the rest of the world’s rules, and I think we’re better off overall the way it is.
In general, it's pretty even-handed on this particular issue:
The best thing we can do isn’t necessarily to try to pay for everything, which is unrealistic and often not an option. Our best option is to avoid supporting and using proprietary monocultures.
Second, it sounds complex because it _is_ complex. He's pretty explicitly addressing the "you're not the customer" canard, as if that's a panacea. In reality it is a trade-off, and paid vs. free is possibly even orthogonal, given the last paragraph.
- tunesmith 14y agoI agree with orthogonal. I see it as a 2x2 grid: free($), paid vs open, closed. free/open: no problem if you have altruistic developers free/closed: seems great, but problems can happen (google) paid/closed: generally works, vulnerable to predatory pricing paid/open: lots of companies experimenting with this model
- fpgeek 14y agopaid/open: vulnerable to a race to the bottom as the open alternatives undercut each other on price
- pgebhard 14y agoAnd that's bad for the customer how?
- wonderzombie 14y agoIt might be good for the customer at first. In the long term, though, it's not difficult to imagine cheap -> free -> monoculture -> square one. IOW it's good for the customer right up until the One True Product is shut down, or there's no viable business model anymore.
- tunesmith 14y agoI'm not sure how an open monoculture is square one. If it becomes less than ideal to anyone, they can just fork it. Plus, you can't really shut down an open "One True Product" if someone can just use the open materials to start it up again. The risk seems to be more in the camp of the company. If it's open, someone could undercut them more easily than if it was closed. So the onus is placed more on the ability of the company to continually add value through services or the kind of innovation that led to the product in the first place, rather than just protecting their IP.