[dba-Tech] FYI: "Why There Will Never Be Another RedHat: The Economics Of Open Source"

Salakhetdinov Shamil mcp2004 at mail.ru
Sat Feb 15 04:17:59 CST 2014


 HI Jim --

Thank you for the link of the article making clear who is paying Linux core development bills. It's "Pareto Principle" in action: 80% is highly paid *core* development work, and 20% is volunteer unpaid mainly decoration development work. The ratio should be nearly the same for other OSS software.

So if nowadays one is planing to start an OSS project from scratch then they have to find good funding for core development - this is what the subject article is about.

-- Shamil

Saturday, February 15, 2014 1:07 AM -07:00 from Jim Lawrence <accessd at shaw.ca>:
>Hi Shamil:
>
>That is true but OSS and the profits directly and indirectly created through this extended community far exceeds proprietary software companies. The amount of wealth generated by the OSS community is much more difficult to quantify as its software is buried in virtually all companies and is supported and created by thousands Startups. Some economist said that the value generated is in the trillions and if this environment ever disappeared there would be no computer industry.
>
>I agree with you, that making proprietary software on top of OSS...that is exactly what is being done today and most of the major players directly and indirectly contribute, huge sums and programmers through various Linux foundation projects.
>
>The following article may provide a bit of insight into who is paying the bills for just the writing and rewriting of the Linux core, which in reality, is a small part of the over-all OSS world.
>
>http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/whos-writing-linux
>
>Jim 
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Salakhetdinov Shamil" < mcp2004 at mail.ru >
>To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" < dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com >
>Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 7:52:33 AM
>Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] FYI: "Why There Will Never Be Another RedHat: The Economics Of Open Source"
>
> Hi Jim --
>
>But the article is about profits from OSS and "closed source", OSS development companies (as RedHat LInux) profits vs. "closed source" companies as MS, *Apple*, *Google* - the latter two do use OSS but the main profits they get are based on closed/proprietary business - hardware for Apple, advertisements - for Google...
>
>...so the author proposes to use the same strategies as Apple and Google: to use OSS as base for custom proprietary solutions.
>
>-- Shamil
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-- 
Салахетдинов Шамиль


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