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The Simple Economics of Open Source

Bill Anderson bill at libc.org
Thu Apr 27 20:20:35 EDT 2000 
Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
> 
> In article <vndya62ykbi.fsf at camelot-new.ccs.neu.edu>, Justin Sheehy
> <dworkin at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> 
> >You mean like BSD/OS, from BSDI?
> >
> >It happened 9 years ago, and they've been selling it ever since.
> 
> Yeah, and BSDI is just tearing up the software world. BSDI sells
> *support* not software, because the software they sell is essentially
> interchangable with the free BSD variants. BSDI have *themselves*
> recognized this fact by merging with Walnut Creek. In future, they'll be
> merging the code of FreeBSD and BSD/OS.
> 
> In other words, the history of BSDI is a perfect example why you can't
> succeed at a closed source business when your product is a software
> commodity. BSDI tried, and have, essentially, failed. In a market where

Surely you don't expect us to believe that the fact that the product was
a 'commodity' (for some definition of commodity) was the cause of their
'failure'. Of course, that also presumes that the merger is indiciative
of a failure. Something else not shown.

I would expect that you would understand that correlation is not
causality, and that merger is not failure.

-- 
In flying I have learned that carelessness and overconfidence are 
usually far more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks. 
          -- Wilbur Wright in a letter to his father, September 1900
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