Brian Behlendorf writes: > On Sat, 24 Feb 2001, Russell Nelson wrote: > > Moron. He obviously has not read http://www.ideavirus.com > > It's the freeware users that create the value that make the paying > > customers willing to pay for it. > > I won't defend NAI on this at all (my personal belief is that this being > security software, the import of having the code be inspectable by all is > high - but that doesn't mean it has to be open source) but your "pay for > it" above depends on a *whole* lot of clarification of what "pay" and "it" > means. And "value", for that matter. Create too much value on the free > side, solve 99% of the world's problems in that niche, and you might not > find enough revenue in solving the remaining 1%. <insert platitudes here > about expanding into other niches, but that might just be moving the > problem...> Well, that gets back to the fundamental problem with our business model. If you give *everything* away, then you have nothing to sell, literally. You could hold back physical items: CDs, books, or hardware encryptors or tokens. You could hold back your time: development, support or guarantees. Or you could hold back unrelated intellectual properties: brand names, logos, data files, or public key signatures. Or you could hold back software unrelated to the success of your open source product: key escrow. Or you could hold back software which needs to be certified before it will be accepted by users: credit card verification systems (Hi, Redhat!) If you hold back nothing as proprietary, you are the proprietor of nothing. Instead, you are a philanthropist. Capitalists and philanthropists are separate (useful) roles in a society. That said, there's still a lot you can give away to help create a temporal monopoly for your company. Even a monopoly secured by the force of law is only temporary. Look at AT&T. -- -russ nelson <sig@russnelson.com> http://russnelson.com Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | "This is Unix... 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | Stop acting so helpless." Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | --Daniel J. Bernstein