Re: [Fsfe-uk] BECTA discriminate against FLOSS?

[Paul Tansom]

** Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> [2004-01-03 00:23]:
<snip>
> > If you have a popular 'product' and can build a strong team and user
> > base you are laughing.  If you looking at a more niche 'product' then
> > the time to develop it has to be funded somehow (even coders have to
> > eat!). With the way the GPL and other FLOSS licenses work it would be
> > a very big risk to invest significant time in developing something
> > that somebody else can just pick up as another offering in their
> > portfolio and charge for support.  They then have all the same revenue
> > opportunities without the initial setup costs.
> 
> True, but they don't have the headstart you have as the `originator' and
> driving force behind the package.  You've initially better knowledge
> than them;  they've initial learning curve costs.  Publicity-wise,
> you're more closely associated with it.  IP-wise, you own the copyright,
> and possibly a trademark.  You can add client's requests into the pucker
> code base, they have to try and persuade you to accept the patch else
> their customers are faced with the dilemma of running the non-mainstream
> version thus binding them into the one company for support.

Fair comment, and I may just be a bit pessamistic. I have discussed this
sort of thing with someone who was looking to get financial support for
his project from RH. Their response was, fine we'd love to add it to our
distro, but we won't give you any support financial or otherwise. Now
this is completely their decision, as it should be, but it does
illustrate a concern for anyone kicking off a new project that isn't
just a hobby or done is spare time - how do you finance your coding
time. Something of significant scale coding wise, and specialist market
user wise has to find funding from somewhere - arguably easier for FLOSS
to do though I guess, since if you can survive financially you are only
risking time not venture capital, but then you could do the same and
then turn it into a commercial product too if your coding team wishes
to.

Getting a trademark, etc. may or may not help. If you put together a
really excellent package for the inexperienced end user to manage a
server, for example, and a big company such as RH picked it up and
branded it as their own (with a few customizations and then classed as a
fork of the main project) would you stand a chance, unless you can get
your name known in a fairly big way first.

> If another company can earn money from supporting your product then
> that's good news.  It means your product is popular enough to have
> created a slightly bigger pie;  one that you still have a large slice
> of.
> 
> Now, if they do a better job of marketing, etc., then they may grow into
> a more profitable, bigger, company than you.  This may be a failing on
> your part depending on your aims.  Still, at least they may consider
> buying you out to get their hands on the real McCoy.

See above, if they have the profile and finances to do it better and the
technical skills to take a good idea and run with it, why do they need
you? It can be the luck of the draw, or economies of scale - even
without financial economies.

> All rhectoric, of course.  Stuff I've heard put forward as arguments.
> But food for thought.
> 
> Lastly, there's nothing to stop you from charging GBP250.00 for the CD,
> printed manual, and six months support which some places will prefer
> over downloading over the Internet, and working through it un-assisted.

Good point, as are they all, but once again it depends on your product
and user base. As an example on this from the other side (as in where
this concept is benefiting me rather than another company to some
extent) is this school software where I am support it from an original
purchase rather than a support contract from the developer -
additionally with reference to other schools using the same package.
Admittedly in this case it is pretty much encouraged by the original
company (so they must be charging a good price for the software!).

All this said, I am most definately not against FLOSS (I wouldn't be
here otherwise), and make extensive use of it myself. In fact all my
customers that use server environments use Linux bar 3 (1 on W2k, 1 on
NT4 and one on Novell 3.11!).

Maybe I'm just a little cynical following my involvement with the first
attempt at commercially 'supporting' SmoothWall! I think I was mainly
interested in the discussion though as how to survive whilst working
with FLOSS is something that interests me - in very practical terms so I
can direct my business towards the most interesting and satisfying work
:-)

Is there a practical and FLOSS friendly license that would allow
personal and business use of an application, but not resale of services
or support without permission (not necessarily implying a financial side
here)? ..or is this against the FLOSS ethos? I'd assume that this is
most practically achieved through trademark of a name, and sidestepped
by a fork! Again, mainly curiosity here I guess. Oh the joys of
politics, business and putting food on the table ;-)

** end quote [Ralph Corderoy]

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/