business models

So, unless you had your head in the sand, you probably noticed HP’s Touchpad tablet computers flying off the shelves of stores after the company slashed the price to $99 ($149 for the 32GB model) and announced that it was discontinuing the product line. » Read more

Reading some stories recently, it would be easy to conclude that there was some sort of a decline in open source. I'll not pretend to have new and objective data on the subject, but having just returned from OSCON in the USA I have to say rumours of the death of open source are premature. » Read more

During our Free vs. Paid Business Models webcast, we had a lot of questions from the audience—more than our guests had time to answer. Nicolas Pujol generously took a few more minutes of his time to answer these followups. » Read more

One of the keys to a successful open source community is appropriate transparency. A community with strong values around transparency will also be likely to respect its participants privacy. Such a community will also be unlikely to have a copyright assignment benefiting a commercial party. Here's why.

An open source community arises from the synchronization of the individual interest of many parties. Each person: » Read more

I can't imagine a world in which compromise and collaboration could be more important than in an open source business model. The model itself opens a Pandora's Box of issues that create a minefield that must be navigated on a daily basis and makes those concepts critical to success. Think, for an instance, about a world in which one or many of the possible points of differentiation are freely shared—and some even given away—without condition to parties whose interests are naturally misaligned with yours. » Read more

The last time you ate Chinese food, you probably weren't thinking about open source development. But according to Jennifer 8. Lee, author of “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles,” the food on your plate arrived there in precisely that way.

General Tso's chicken? Unrecognizable to its creator, let alone the General's relatives. Swap out the butter and vanilla for sesame and miso in that most famous of Chinese desserts, the fortune cookie, and you have something that closely resembles tsujiura senbei, a Japanese fortune cracker. Americans will be sad to learn that much of the rest of the world—including China—is rather unfamiliar with this delicacy. » Read more

There's one major advantage to openness in business. Like the Billy Joel song says, it's just a matter of trust. 

Harvard Business Review's Peter Merholz recently highlighted several successful businesses modeled on trust—and, though he doesn't note it, openness. » Read more

Companies that are creating massive value typically aren’t building a better mousetrap. They’re not improving on existing technologies or simply adding new features. Instead, they’re changing the business model. This was the message behind Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst’s keynote at today’s CED Venture 2010 Conference.  » Read more