Comments on: Three new and emerging open source business models http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/three-new-and-emerging-open-source-business-models/2010/07/10 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:37:04 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Rob Myers http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/three-new-and-emerging-open-source-business-models/2010/07/10/comment-page-1#comment-431953 Rob Myers Sat, 10 Jul 2010 11:51:09 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=9701#comment-431953 None of these are new. :-) 3 is bespoke software, which is how Stallman made the money to start writing GNU (it should still be free software for its users). The only reason it needs to be rediscovered is that people wanted a way of scaling businesses to billion-dollar levels, and support looked like a way of doing that. So they rushed out waving their copies of "the cathedral and the bazaar" and spent the next two decades trying to be paid for something other than writing software. 2 and 1 "failed in the market" before, so it's not so much that the criticism of them is scathing as it is correct and borne out by experience. It's possible to market anything as open source, but it's much harder to call something free software that isn't. This isn't a bug of open source, it's a feature. None of these are new. :-) 3 is bespoke software, which is how Stallman made the money to start writing GNU (it should still be free software for its users). The only reason it needs to be rediscovered is that people wanted a way of scaling businesses to billion-dollar levels, and support looked like a way of doing that. So they rushed out waving their copies of “the cathedral and the bazaar” and spent the next two decades trying to be paid for something other than writing software.

2 and 1 “failed in the market” before, so it’s not so much that the criticism of them is scathing as it is correct and borne out by experience. It’s possible to market anything as open source, but it’s much harder to call something free software that isn’t. This isn’t a bug of open source, it’s a feature.

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