Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Putting a price on open source only makes it thrive

November 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Putting a price on open source only makes it thrive

TAGS: Open Source

Putting a price on open source has grown the market

I was intrigued to hear Brady's thoughts on the O'Reilly Media's impressions on the Web 2.0 Conference. One, in particular, caught my attention:

Commercial penetration is chasing users away: It was noted that MySpace's traffic was down from the previous month. We're wondering if this is a sign of users running away from monetization. Will there be a continuous migration of users away from properties as they try to capitalize on their success?

I found it interesting because monetization has had the exact opposite effect on open source. The more commercial interests have crowded in, the bigger the customer interest and associated market.

Both the Internet and open source started out as "free" phenomena. As time has passed, open source has gravitated toward direct monetization models, whereas the web has increasingly relied on indirect monetization models (e.g., advertising). The reason seems clear: the nature of the customer. Commercial open source software has generally directed at enterprises that expect to pay for software. Not so the web.

Or is that true? Isn't the web used by people that have long paid for books, magazines, newspapers, music, etc.?

Some would argue that it's the sheer ease of access that demands the $0.00 price on the web. But isn't this also true of open source software? Still, people seem willing to pay for support/service around the free bits that Linus Torvalds writes, but not for an insightful article in The New York Times by Thomas Friedman.

I don't get it. Your thoughts?

(This post was written while listening to The Flaming Lips' "Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell." Could that be my problem? :-)

Posted by Matt Asay on November 15, 2006 09:41 PM

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