Sunday, December 05, 2004

Re: Is Some Software Meant to be Secret?

Tim Bray and Microsoft's Joe Marini

To open source or not. Tis is a very big question.

Wrt the articles, if I provide source of my app, don't I have to provide it during developement phase too? In that case any new feature can be picked up by a rival before its out in the market and then any major benefits may be lost.

If the source is not provided early, then it can be argued that the project is not really open-source.

It depends a lot on what is the source of revenue for the company. If you have a large user-base then money can be made through subscription too. Disruptive technology was pointed out in some previous blog. Lots of open-source are basically destroying closed-proprietary apps. Users can get similar or better features for free and no one wants to pay - like firefox. Unless you have a major app for which there is no competition only then can you afford being closed. But eventually some open-source app will catch up and then you'll not have much of a choice. Basically it depends on the project and the team. For newer applications I think it makes more sense to be open. But then again a proper source of revenue has to be thought of.

MS sees a subscription based model as the future. I think Web-services will play a big role in this. Sun has a subscription model for JDS and plans something similar for Solaris 10. They even want to offer grid computing wherein the customer simply pays for CPU cycles. So the revenue model is changing.


Ok that's two for going public. I guess we'll do it. But remember, that puts pressure on us to please the shareholders.

There should be no pressure on us. We continue what we do. If someone else is interested, they join. Simple. I just do not see the need to please anyone else


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