[NTLUG:Discuss] Interesting & Humorous "Explaining Linux and Open Source software"

[Robert Pearson]

Interesting and humorous points of view (roll your own "catch-phrase")
on Open Software from Bruce Eckels Mindview Web site at---
<<http://mindview.net/FAQ/FAQ-011>>

Q: Why do you think open source works?

A:
This is the question that comes up a lot with open software: "If we
give away the cow, how do we make money?" So far, the only answer is
in cow maintenance: people really just want the milk from a reliable
cow.

If you sell them a cow in a closed box, then they don't really know
what's going on, whether the cow is sick or dead (Microsoft has been
selling sick cows — some would say with mad cow disease - for a long
time now, and getting away with it because they are in boxes), or most
importantly whether the cow can be healed or not. So it appears
customers are all for just having the whole cow. But now they have the
thing and don't know how to service it. Since it's working so well,
people don't seem to mind paying for upgrades, for example (and
upgrades haven't been that expensive - the latest version of Red Hat,
6.2, is something like $25 at Costco), and service agreements from
companies like IBM. You get a better cow for free, and you can get
support if you want to pay for it. One of the nice things about this
model is that you actually pay for support, whereas with the old model
the company would already have your money when you bought the product,
and sure, sure, we provide support too - but that actually appeared to
cost them money, so they tried to minimize those costs and you end up
with difficult and not-very-useful support systems. Whereas if support
IS the product, then it had better be good or the customer won't pay
for it.

Because the source is open, a company can build on it rather than
creating a product from scratch, so add-ons become a possibility.
Autodesk was so successful because it allowed third party add ons to
enhance the product.

Is that all? I have the sense that there might be something else that
would be a way to make money with free stuff. The key, as we know but
the marketing people always seem to miss, is to try to figure out
"what do people want?" The answer in the computer arena is that they
want work done for them (that's what computers do). I suppose the
other area has something to do with services, possibly like those
services that provide you with things like databases for your web
site, and email list managers, etc., so that all you have to do is
hook these pieces together without doing the programming or
maintenance yourself.