>>>>> "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. -- University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091 _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."