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I agree with orthogonal. I see it as a 2x2 grid: free($), paid vs open, closed. free/open: no problem if you have altruistic developers free/closed: seems gr
by tunesmith 14y ago
I agree with orthogonal. I see it as a 2x2 grid: free($), 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.