Towards A Real Business Model For Open-Source Software

[Hoodlum]

Hoodlum, if any successful hybrid project would become entirely proprietary, why hasn't OS X become entirely proprietary?

They took the code, taking advantage of the already existing code and gave a little back. A massive overwhelming majority of development is kept proprietary. To the extent that darwin, on it's own, is completely irrelevant. By contrast you were suggesting giving away a large majority of your work, from scratch. Not taking pre-existing code and keeping the overwhelming majority of future development closed. Big difference.

Your ridiculous assertion is so damn funny because we have empirical proof with Mac OS X that it is false.

The funny part is you actually believe that all the while your ridiculous analogy doesn't work. Apples and oranges

Haha, hilarious how once I point out that most cloud servers are running much more closed-source code than open-source code, you change the subject to whether the html, javascript and protocols are open!

I think you'll find HTML / Javascript are pretty essential parts of most cloud services, these are open. As is almost all the essential code running the actual server (Basing this on the overwhelming majority of significant players running OSS). As is the protocol used for the net. Yep, by and large it's mostly open. You have yet to substantiate any claims to the contrary. I'm sure Google's search algorithm is closed but how much of their stack is that? 0.000000000001%? less? Yeah, great example you gave there

Clearly supercomputing clusters choose linux only because it costs nothing, as closed-source companies would be able to produce a better closed solution easily.

Then why haven't they? Infact Microsoft is investing heavily in this area right now. There is a lot of money to be gained here and yet they are still behind. This debunks the quoted FUD.

Science may not be limited to supercomputing but since you have no evidence of science being dominated by linux, that hardly matters, does it?

No evidence? Oh please. This doesn't require you to have worked at CERN or NASA or even in the field. Have you ever been to a university research lab? Clearly not.

On a personal note I'm pretty confident of this claim, you may want to check my occupation.

The internet may use some open source software, but since it uses a lot more closed-source software, my assertion that closed-source dominates still holds.

Known falsehood. Backup your claims or don't bother making them.

Funny how you've now lowered the bar to whether the internet uses any open source software at all.

These are called examples. It would serve you well in future arguments to use them.

PS. desktop machines != the internet.

Hilarious how you keep repeating "there is no incentive, there is no incentive" like a mantra, yet cannot come up with a single argument against the two incentives I gave in my original post, ie reduced costs through code sharing and allowing outside innovation to easily take place and be paid for.

Reduced costs how? code sharing with who? There is no significant OSS community that contributes (or imo, would be willing to contribute to) closed projects like this. The state of the community involvement with Open Solaris is a prime example of this fact.

As you gain no reduced costs through code sharing and your competitors can just re-use your open code and keep any improvement to themselves. You end up with the inferior product and go out of business, well done.

Come back when you can come up with an advantage to this model. Until then I guess you'll just keep on with infinite faith in your ideological, hippie view that everyone shares for the benefit of the world and no one would exploit the weakness of your model for personal gain. Naive would be an understatement.

That means either a) there are valid arguments against my hyrid model but you are too dumb to come up with them since you clearly know no economics and have no business experience or b) perhaps there is no worthwhile counter-argument to my hybrid model.

or C) You have yet again failed to understand business or even basic logical thought / comprehension.

You seem to believe giving away your investment to competitors that can build upon it and keep improvements to themselves isn't an issue, this is unrealistic. You seem to have this ideological view where everyone shares for the benefit of humanity but this is pure fantasy.

I bought Mac OS X 6 years ago because of Darwin and the unix apps that are part of it and can be run on it, as do a lot of geeks who buy Mac OS X nowadays, so you're wrong that Darwin doesn't matter.

Back to your incredibly niche target again. Geeks make up what percentage of computer users? That's right, almost nothing.

[Hoodlum]

It seems as you have been unable to come up with any counterpoints that replying to you is pretty futile. If you want to show this model to be viable I suggest you try it and come back. I seriously doubt we'll hear from you when you have though

Good luck, you'll need it.