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Business principle behind open source

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  • Business principle behind open source

    1) Yes, you get what you pay for. If you need support for 24/7, you pay for support. Or you pay for competent on-call staff. Nothings different in that respect between open-source and closed-source software. (If your 3AM crash was due to your guru's system mods, then perhaps you need a new guru.) 2) The last statistics I saw showed that 31% of all domains ran on Linux servers. Another 11% ran on FreeBSD. That is, roughly 42% of all internet domains were on open-source operating systems. That's a lot of sites that consider open-source operating systems "ready for prime-time". (To avoid embarrassment, I won't even mention where OS/400 ended up in that survery.)

  • #2
    Business principle behind open source

    Hans, We totally agree. You get what you pay for. When your Linux machine dies at 3am on Sunday (an experience that I've had) who ya gonna call? It's a nightmare. I can tell you for CERTAIN that Red Hat (our supplier) wasn't available. All they do is copy disks. My main Linux guru was in Key West. The Linux guys say, "hey, there are dozens of newsgroups out there where you can get support." Yeah, right at 3am Sunday. I know, I could have purchased a support contract with Linuxware, but that wouldn't have helped. Why? The Linux guru had made dozens of changes to the OS. It wasn't pure vanilla. In fact, as I found out the hard way, very few Linux installs are pure vanilla. If you have a Linux guru, I can almost guarantee there are mods made. Support lasts as long as you can get in contact with the Linux guru. Once he leaves you're USC. Do you run your AS/400s without an IBM maintenance contract? Do you purchase Software Support? If so, why? Why not wing it like the Linux guys do? You don't "wing it" because it's poor and risky business. Even without an MBA that should be a no brainer. Linux, other than pure vanilla in an appliance mode, is not ready for prime time. Risky, too risky. Even in appliance mode, it's scary. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "Hans Boldt" wrote in message news:2187785f.1@WebX.WawyahGHajS... | I can understand how an MBA finds the concept of open-source difficult. | | Actually, there are solid business principles behind open-source software. I never took a business course in my life, but here's what I've read: What determines the cost of any product? Answer: What users are willing to pay. (Not the cost of developing the product.) If the price customers are willing to pay is greater than the cost of production, you make a profit. Otherwise, you lose money. What's the cost of producing a copy of a software product? Answer: Practically nothing. Since it's so easy to reproduce software, the cost the people are willing to pay is negligible. That's the fundamental principle behind open-source software. It's not communism at all. Open-source is driven more by libertarian principles. | | Now then, if the software is given away, how can a business make money in the open-source world? There are lots of ways. For example, the development of Perl is substantially funded by the publisher O'Reilly, who make money selling the definitive Perl books. Other companies (like IBM) make money selling services. One pinball program was sponsored by a beer company. | | I agree that there are also "communist" aspects. There is a lot of free software available. Rather than pay the developers of the programs they use with dollars, many users of free software pay back into the community at large in other ways, by offering their own specific talents: programming, graphic design, documentation, etc. Considering the hassles of producing commercial software, or collecting money for "shareware", this is not unrealistic. This still fits in with free-market principles, though - it's just that the benefits to the developers of the software aren't necessarily monetary.

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    • #3
      Business principle behind open source

      Of my three clients, one has full IBM support, one has hardware support only, and one has no IBM support. The one that has no support is a shop with a model D20 running V3R2. It does not run 24/7, and has not had any unscheduled down time for the last five years. For all three shops, I am the only individual who does any development, design, programming, etc. Each shop has several hundred programs to maintain. One shop has over two thousand production programs. It is a tribute to the architecture that allows this much development to occur in such a short span of time. In the past I have had mainframe and Unix (HP-UX to be precise) clients. The Unix experience was to say the least, distateful. Having been down that path, I care not to travel upon it again. At this point I can (and do) use the AS/400 as a web server, a mail server, a database server, an application server, etc. From an application system perspective, and a cost perspective I fail to see the justification, or ROI of bringing in anything else (with the exceptions of PC desktop applications, and a firewall) to a homogeneous shop. Dave

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