On Wed, 2002-02-13 at 15:42, Roger Fujii wrote:
but I wouldn't use the word 'thrive' to describe a company that is barely profitable (which is what the original poster used). It's not my opinion (and probably not even Brent's) that it is *impossible* to eek out a living. I think the point is that it is DIFFICULT to do so. I don't mind hearing GPL advocates say that it is more socially desirable, equitable... (not that I necessarily agree with it, but it is a valid point of view). But I don't see any evidence that it is helpful to commerical entities (which is some of the reasoning behind a license switch).
Currently, there are only a few software companies making huge amounts of money. It's not *just* Free Software-based software companies. Cygnus had problems making money; so is Borland. Red Hat isn't terribly profitable yet; Be Corp. went belly-up. Fact is, it's hard for a start-up to make money at all in the current software industry. It's not the licensing model that is the problem; it's the industry itself.
Yes, it's easier to make money when you induce artificial scarcity in a product. But as Word Perfect Corp, Ashton-Tate, Paperback Software, iCat Corp, Banyan, NeXT, and Digital Research will tell you, it ain't easy making money in the software world, no matter what.
- Tony