From: Chad Perrin Date: 2007-07-24T05:21:34+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby Editor On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 10:41:54PM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > Alex Young wrote: > > I wasn't talking about independent developers > > specifically, but what reason is there that MySQL's business model > > couldn't scale down? > Lots of reasons ... look up "barriers to entry" in any MBA textbook. Without making a case for specific barriers to entry that apply in the case of MySQL's business model, you're not actually making a point. Throwing economics terms around without any context for applicability does not constitute evidence for an argument. For instance, "barriers to entry" applies to anyone entering any market, including small to medium firms like MySQL, individual developers trying to sell individual pieces of software like TextMate, open source software support firms, huge hardware companies that are more well known for the software side of things, and so on. It doesn't matter what your business model is, how big your company is, or what the legal situation is -- there will always be barriers to entry. The point where all three of those things come into play is in determining *what* barriers to entry apply, and how insurmountable they are. > > > Besides, it doesn't really matter if you don't like this particular open > > source business model. There are plenty of others. > There are plenty of business models. There are many fewer *profitable* > business models, and almost all of them require that a product or > service *exist* and outrank its competitors on important *non-price* > differentiators of quality as perceived by customers. All attempts to enter a market require some initial investment (barring pathological exceptions). It's actually easier (read: "cheaper" in terms of invested resources) to build recognition and desirability for a piece of software when its source is open than when it's closed. In the open source case, you can just toss it out in the wild and see if it picks up enough steam to provide you with some opportunity for generating revenue (whether it involves direct support, feature commissions like RMS provides for GNU Emacs, secondary advertising revenue, or something else); in the closed source case you have to find some way to convince people to give it a try without opening the source to them, which significantly limits your potential audience even if you initially give it away, but leaves you opportunity to develop a per-unit retail revenue stream. People seem to have some strange impression that open source development means no revenue streams -- but what it really means is that *different* revenue streams are available to you. You can either follow in the footsteps of people who have already developed some of those revenue models, or you can pioneer a new one if you're clever enough and potentially reap huge rewards. The differing development models result in differing opportunities. Thinking there aren't any opportunities demonstrates a lack of imagination, not a lack of opportunities. > > Red Hat is another good example of a thriving open source business > model. However, in the case of RHEL, I would argue that it *is* > technologically superior to its competition, with the possible exception > of Solaris. There just isn't another server OS out there that runs on > commodity hardware with that level of security, reliability and performance. Well . . . there is, but I don't think you're counting other possible examples in your comparison (like the BSD Unix variants). I'll just assume you're lumping all Linux distributions together when you say RHEL, and not excluding other distributions like Debian and Slackware. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] Dr. Ron Paul: "Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons."