[Aleader-dev] Re: productization vs open source

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Mon, Aug 11, 2003 at 10:44:28PM -0500, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 11, 2003 at 10:07:50PM -0500, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> > > One quick question though...(Btw, thanks V V much for pointing out that
> > > the DANVA costs $250.  Holly mollee!)...suppose we were to productize
> > > something based on Aleader.  Since it has knoppix inside (I am presuming
> > > it has some sort of open source type licensing), does its licensing
> > > disallow one to make a product based on knoppix?
> >
> > The short answer is "no".  We can sell something.  That's how
> > Red Hat or Suse are able to sell Linux distributions.  The only
> > wrinkle is that we must provide complete source code.
> 
> Right.  As I understand it RH (and presumablye Suse), make their money
> via documentation, support, handholding etc...So, that is one business
> model.

Yah, and I like that business model.  I could go for that.

> How about other business models...E.g. can someone pervert things and
> make a small change to the source and sell their own version?

No, that's exactly what the GPL is designed to prevent.

> Can we
> anticipate this and add a twist to our own version of copyleft or whatever
> it is called that says if you make a gizmo based on our gizmo and sell
> it, you must give us 5% of whatever you make?

It might be possible, but that would slow down adoption of the test.
That's why I would be against it.

> Another issue is that in the psychological realm one needs to validate a
> thing on a large group of subjects.  Sometimes this means getting norms
> so that a score based on a test administration can be clinically useful.
> This can be quite expensive.  Psycorp (not to be confused with the homonym
> Cycorp) spends big bucks getting their tests validated from a broad sample
> of kiddos all over the US...Psychologists don't work for free because
> they have to pay lawyers for malpractice insurance.

OK, but I believe the way to get into a big revenue stream is to
convince a large number of psychologists that our test is
extremely useful.

> Well, maybe the reason I am delving into this is the following: if I can
> financially justify working on this now, then I can feel less guilty
> working on it.  I get the sense you aren't interested much at all in
> productizability.

I am interested in productizability, but only _after_ we somehow
generate a lot of demand.

I can't predict or promise anything about monetary payback.
Get your expenses down, income up, and try to increase your
free time.  That's what I did.

On the other hand, if we can somehow show how test results are
correlated with career performance (like Goleman) then there
will be lots of opportunities: human resources, training,
tutorials, and education.  Our research has to be air-tight
though.

The really speculative stuff is in my writings on philosophy
and religion.  There is a potential jackpot there, but we still
have a long way to go before we are even close.

-- 
.. Sensual .. Perceptual .. Cognitive .. Emotional .. Oh My!