>>>>> "Edward" == Edward J Huff <edward.huff@acm.org> writes:

    Edward> One possible approach which hasn't been mentioned is "The
    Edward> Street Performer Protocol."  See

It's been discussed on FSB, but not in detail.  sourceXchange and
CoSource.com were/are real-world implementations.  Both were impure in
the sense that they were more customer-driven than developer-driven.

SPP suffers from the free rider problem.  Standard economic analysis
goes back, oh, to the English enclosure movement (1600s) or so.  There
are standard solutions (Groves mechanism, Vickrey auction) all of
which depend on (oops) government provision or intellectual property.

Underprovision from a social point of view doesn't mean you can't make
a profit.  However, in practice, SPP looks to be less effective than
seeking a product niche where price discrimination can work.  The big
problem is that the incentive to free ride is going to rise the larger
the product becomes (ie, as the developer continues to improve it).
Thus you need a "3M model" of your business -- identify a good
product, milk it while it's a cash cow, then sell it to the butcher.
I think that's unlikely to be attractive to most FS developers.

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