As both a long term advocate of OSS and a small business owner some of the arguments here on both sides strike a chord and even this snippy exchange has value in making me think, so thanks for sharing.
Personally I'd like to think that a services-based revenue model with an open product is the model that will become the norm but not 100% sure this works right now for any software (office app v enterprise monitoring tool as an example)
Great post Mark and the references to RHEL and Wordpress.com being tamer flavours of the community versions really struck a chord with me - I'd never looked at them that way before.
I'd love to see a future where the best software was stabilised and presented with a rich support and services ecosystem for corporate use, while the fuller-featured versions remained free for all - a 180 degree shift from today's seemingly commonplace approach of "lite" = free.
Authored Comments
As both a long term advocate of OSS and a small business owner some of the arguments here on both sides strike a chord and even this snippy exchange has value in making me think, so thanks for sharing.
Personally I'd like to think that a services-based revenue model with an open product is the model that will become the norm but not 100% sure this works right now for any software (office app v enterprise monitoring tool as an example)
Great post Mark and the references to RHEL and Wordpress.com being tamer flavours of the community versions really struck a chord with me - I'd never looked at them that way before.
I'd love to see a future where the best software was stabilised and presented with a rich support and services ecosystem for corporate use, while the fuller-featured versions remained free for all - a 180 degree shift from today's seemingly commonplace approach of "lite" = free.