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> corner the open source market Once you've "corner the open source" market what does that get you? I assume Red Hat has "corner the open source" Linux server
by jussij 14y ago
> corner the open source market
Once you've "corner the open source" market what does that get you?
I assume Red Hat has "corner the open source" Linux server market and the're earnings are nothing compared to MS.
This is a serious question, what do you get when you've cornered any open source market?
Google cornered the Android market until Samsung made billions from Google's efforts.
- pjmlp 14y agoThis is what is so hard for many FOSS fans to understand. The ecosystem has only expanded to the extent big corporations are willing to invest money on it. If IBM, Google and others had not invested into FOSS as a means to help them sell services, most likely the situation would be quite similar to the mid 80's, in what concerns software development tools. In the markets where you cannot sell services, it is very hard to make a living from FOSS.
- icebraining 14y agoWhy do you say this is hard for FOSS fans to understand?
- pjmlp 14y agoMany dream of a world where all software is FOSS. The point is, only corporations pay for FOSS in form of SaaS, consulting, support contracts or trainings. Usually the only way consumers pay for FOSS is when buying hardware with FOSS inside. However if you plan to create a company developing products that are software based, where the average developer salary would be around € 1500 netto, quite normal in many European countries, it will be very hard to keep the company afloat when targeting markets outside what I mentioned above.
- astrodust 14y agoA better metric would be "earnings per unit of market share". RedHat's market share is much smaller, so it's hardly surprising their earnings are lower.