Re: GPL vs. sweatshops (was Re: Bias)

On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Roland wrote:

> At 10:26 AM 7/15/02 -0400, Deven T. Corzine wrote:
> 
> >Keep in mind that Mozilla and OpenOffice were commercial products (Netscape
> >and StarOffice) that were released freely as a calculated business risk to
> >take down Microsoft.  AOL/Netscape and Sun aren't getting a direct return
> >proportional to their costs involved, but instead they're betting that if
> >they can weaken Microsoft's hold on the market, it will be worth the huge
> >loss they've incurred by releasing that commercial code.
> 
> Huge loss?
> Netscape was already freely available when it was still closed source. If 
> they charged for it they wouldn't have a chance against Microsoft internet 
> explorer.

It was only freely available for personal use, and then only because it was 
necessary to compete against freely-available Internet Explorer, funded by 
a monopolist in an attempt to conquer yet another market.  Netscape wasn't 
able to garner much revenue from their browser since Microsoft was abusing 
their monopoly position in the marketplace.  No doubt this made the choice 
much easier.  The fact remains that the reason they've released the browser 
code was to try to turn the tables on Microsoft.

Are you really going to suggest that Netscape is making a direct profit on 
Mozilla or even branded Netscape versions, after all the investment they've 
had to pour into its development?

> In the case of OpenOffice Sun still sells the proprietary version 
> Staroffice 6.0. So I don't think that they are losing that much.

It's all a matter of perspective.  Strategically, it's a worthwhile loss.  
They allow OpenOffice to be a loss leader because it helps to take away 
from the Microsoft monopoly, which is seriously harming them.  Yes, they're 
selling StarOffice, because they still want to keep whatever profit they 
can hope to retain.  Nevertheless, there are many users who will be quite 
satisfied with OpenOffice who might otherwise have considered paying for 
StarOffice.  So yes, I'd say they're taking a loss.

However, Sun's probably taking much less of a loss than Netscape, since 
they have a better chance of arranging large corporate sales of StarOffice, 
which might eventually make it profitable.  For now, I'm betting they're 
still very much in the hole, however.

> In fact if OpenOffice is widely adopted it may even boost Staroffice6.0 
> because both interoperate perfectly. And there are lots of companies who 
> would rather pay for Staroffice instead of getting free OpenOffice 
> because they want the corporation support(of SUN).

Yes, of course.  And they can add some proprietary code to make StarOffice 
more appealing, because they're NOT bound by the GPL.  That doesn't mean 
that they haven't given up a lot of sales by releasing OpenOffice, at least 
in the short term.

In the long term, their best hope is for OpenOffice to become the standard 
instead of Microsoft Office.  Should that happen, the fraction that pays 
for StarOffice could easily exceed the sales that otherwise would have been 
more limited in the face of Microsoft's monopoly.  They're takign a gamble, 
but it could pay off big -- and that's why they're doing it.

AOL/Netscape and Sun are supporting Mozilla and OpenOffice for justifiable 
business reasons (despite the risks) -- not out of free-software ideology.

Deven