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Why open source is unsustainable (Financial Times)Why open source is unsustainable (Financial Times)Posted Oct 24, 2004 11:56 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: Why open source is unsustainable (Financial Times) by pellicci Parent article: Why open source is unsustainable (Financial Times)
Open Source Software needs to develop a sustainable economic model.In my view, the reverse is true: sustainable economic models must adapt to Open Source Software. Companies usually associated with closed software development must move to open source and release their wares as Free software. This is, to a large extent, what is happening right now. It is a good thing that commercial vendors are funding big projects; it means that they are willing to do their part in order to sustain open source projects, since they later benefit from the resulting software. Furthermore, I think that "open source" and "business model" are mostly orthogonal concepts; one is related to software engineering, the other to economics. There are companies who give away closed software (Winamp's Nullsoft comes to mind), and those that sell Free software (like Red Hat). Only a small portion of pathological business models are precluded from open source development, such as development of undocumented interfaces (as Microsoft with the SMB protocol), formats (office suites) or secret algorithms (as Adobe with PDF encryption and most DRM vendors). Companies in this range are the ones that are truly afraid of open source; the rest are slowly adapting.
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