Re: Augustin's 8 Simple Rules for Open-Source Business Strategy

Taran Rampersad <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.misc.free-software-business
Organization KnowProSE.com
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Larry M. Augustin wrote:

>Taran Rampersad wrote:
>  
>
>>Given the recent discussions on the list, this appears to be pertinent -
>>and accurate.
>>
>>http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1553990,00.asp
>>    
>>
>
>I'm a bit surprised at the coverage of that talk.  I certainly didn't expect
>anyone to write a story on it.
>
>I would appreciate feedback from this list.  I usually find myself speaking
>about Open Source to people who don't understand Open Source.  Usually they
>barely understand the concept of source code, and have never written
>software.  They wouldn't have any idea what to do with source code if they
>had it.  The talk covered in that article seems to make sense to them, and
>puts Open Source in terms that they can understand.  It also gives them
>ideas as to how they can begin using Open Source.
>
>Larry
>  
>
I suppose the only criticism I have on the *coverage* of what you said 
is that it doesn't talk about some of the long term benefits. You may 
have mentioned it, but it seems to have been missed. Doc Searls wrote 
something in LJ not too long ago (a month or two, I think - magazine is 
in the school library now). The 'Do it Yourself' paradigm returning; the 
fact that tailoring with FOSS can be done inhouse. Collaboration as well 
is a successful model; Apache is a brilliant example of like companies 
collaborating to create something which they can all use.

Of course, all of that is lost on most people new to the concepts of 
FOSS - but I think that these are probably the most important aspects. 
FOSS has changed the software market, and it is changing the way people 
do business outside of the FOSS market. It's changing a lot of things. 
Consider that right now, I'm playing with Drupal on eAsylum.net, which 
will allow me to experiment with a few things and have some fun (the 
main motive). In a world without FOSS, Drupal would probably not exist. 
In a world without FOSS, a lot of things that people take for granted 
would not exist.

Without FOSS, I wonder how much this email would have cost me to send... 
Operating system licensing, software licensing - on every node that this 
email touches as it hops to your email client.

-- 
Taran Rampersad
[email protected]
http://www.knowprose.com
http://www.fsc.cc/
http://www.uwi.edu/scs/
http://www.a42.com
http://www.xeebra.com

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