Savio, Here is where, IMHO, your argument misses ".. people who would have paid to get your product will get your product without paying for it."

The assumption that they "...would have paid to get your product..." is a bad one. A lot (most even) of these user would not have paid for it and would never have used it at all.

A huge benefit of the open source business model is that a lot of people use the product that would otherwise have not. All of that use, and all of the feedback it generates, drive the quality and rate of innovation in the product in a way that, for most software products, would have been impossible. This effect makes software useful and competitive that would not have been using the commercial business model.

For most software, especially from start-ups, to use your reluctantly proposed solution of "just use the commercial business model from day 1", would mean that the cost of barriers to market entry to get to a point of critical mass would be so high that most would not be able to finance it and and wouldn't make it.

The open source model gives new companies and new products the opportunity to cross the market entry barrier in a mature and consolidated software market. It is the cost of entry.

I agree that when a new company has crossed that barrier and achieved mid-size status, like Red Hat, they may need to begin to look for strategies to find further growth.

I believe there are many opportunities to provide growth that don't abandon their open source roots, and I think we'll see some successes in developing those strategies, perhaps at Red Hat.

But to have adopted "just use the commercial software business model from day 1" would never have provided the opportunity to have a business at all. Bill Miller, xaware.org

After reading your posts for the last ~1 year, I am wondering why you are on an open source forum. It seems to me that you don't understand the point that comparing the newer model of open source software (technical and business models) to the models of the proprietary companies is not the be-all-end-all of the comparisons. Specifically the revenues and profit margins of the two models. They are different, and will be different.

Here is to hoping that one of two things happens in the new year:
- you reflect on things over the holidays, and realize that your perspective is "off" for this type of blog forum.
- the Infoworld people find people with a broader, forward looking mind, to write about open source.

John

Agree with Bill and John. Especially John. I admit I have traded barbs with Savio in the past. I still like my "Open Source Community and Barack Obama" blog that got him off his uninformed rants of JBoss not being "open source" enough.

Savio appears to be stuck in a 3 month rut yet again...it's the same old flawed analysis rehashed and restated in slightly different contexts. Comparing apples and oranges.

Prior to that, some of his blogs were fairly well thought out...maybe 2008 will inspire some fresh, rut-less thoughts.

Anyhow...off for some good food and spirits to ring in the new year.