Agreed. Except maybe that one dollar sign is too much :)
> The thing that is worrisome, to put it mildly, is that it takes a much
> larger effort to create new stuff than to copy it. If you manage to
> kill off the source of the new stuff, what do you copy? Oh, nothing?
> OK, so now the open source community has to produce the new stuff.
> Let's have another picture:
>
> Revenue from commercial software: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
> Revenue from open source: $ (at best)
This is misleading. Revenue has nothing to do with whether the software
is open source or not. Look at Digital's and IBM's billions that they
made as a service organization, where often there "proprietary" software
simply existed as a loss leader which opens doors to new service
contracts.
There is a pool of money that businesses have, that can be spent on
total IT. At the end of the day, businesses don't give a damn whether
they are spending 80% on service, 10% on hardware, and 10% on software,
or, 10% of service, 20% on hardware, and 70% on software. As long as
their business needs are met within the given budget, they're satisfied
to let the engineers dicker about whether OSS or proprietary software is
better.
Jeff
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