The comments are as interesting as the original article, particularly this one http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/entry/the_economics_of_software#comment-1093885996000 where Bryan talks about the open sourcing model only really works for situations where the company has other “stuff” to sell (hardware, services, other software etc.) and was not making much revenue from what was previously proprietary software. With that context it makes perfect business sense that Sun would open source Solaris and Java and spend big money buying MySQL. It makes zero sense for somebody like Microsoft who are making software people actually want to pay for :-).
Bryan talks about the FYO point of replacing proprietary software, yet as far as I can see there is exactly the same lock-in effect when you become reliant on a software vendor to provide you with hardware and support. Witness the constant whining around the amount of money RedHat charges for enterprise support on their Linux distribution.
Bottom line, software is inherently complex and takes a lot of human effort to get right and that investment has to be paid for one way or another, as I’m sure you are finding out with your business.
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Andrew
July 7, 2008 at 6:50 pm
The comments are as interesting as the original article, particularly this one http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/entry/the_economics_of_software#comment-1093885996000 where Bryan talks about the open sourcing model only really works for situations where the company has other “stuff” to sell (hardware, services, other software etc.) and was not making much revenue from what was previously proprietary software. With that context it makes perfect business sense that Sun would open source Solaris and Java and spend big money buying MySQL. It makes zero sense for somebody like Microsoft who are making software people actually want to pay for :-).
Bryan talks about the FYO point of replacing proprietary software, yet as far as I can see there is exactly the same lock-in effect when you become reliant on a software vendor to provide you with hardware and support. Witness the constant whining around the amount of money RedHat charges for enterprise support on their Linux distribution.
Bottom line, software is inherently complex and takes a lot of human effort to get right and that investment has to be paid for one way or another, as I’m sure you are finding out with your business.