Business Alliances

Much of my recent thinking about Free Software business is now
written up at http://norbert.ch/business-alliances.html

I'd like to know what you all think about this, please :-)

The title is: "How Business Alliances Are the Key To Victory for the
Free Software Movement"

Abstract: This essay proposes a new answer to a question which has long
been nagging me: "How can a company derive business benefits from
contributing to the Free Software movement?" I suggest that with an
appropriate strategy, it should be possible to obtain significant
business benefits from the "reputation game" social dynamics which are
at the heart of the Free Software community.

The main argument is the following:  Consider a number of companies
for which furthering the Free Software movement is among the core
values of the company.  Then by contributing to the Free Software
community, these businesses can build mutual trust, which will
increase both the success likelihood and the benefit expectation of
business alliances.  Hence it is possible to derive a business benefit
(for which the "free rider" problem does not occur) from R&D
contributions to the Free Software.

Greetings, Norbert.

-- 
Founder & Steering Committee member of http://gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel +41 1 972 20 59        Fax +41 1 972 20 69       http://norbert.ch