[LINK] 'The Business of Free Software'

[anthony hornby]

Thanks Roger,
Makes some reasonable statements about why corporations are involved in
OSS. Hardly surprising ones though.

As to which platform should be the platform of choice, that's easy, it
is always "the best one to suit your needs".

Open source should be one choice that is considered when selecting a
technology solution. It is up to you to work out within your own
environment, considering what your organisations priorities and needs
are, whether it is the best choice.

If only all technology decisions were made based on good understanding
of the need/s, and partnered with sane and careful examination of
suitability to that identified need/s<grin>.

Thanks for the links.

Anthony.

On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 10:04 +1100, Roger Clarke wrote:
> The Business of Free Software
> January 15, 2007
> http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5574.html
> 
> Reports on the following working paper / preprint:
> 
> Marco Iansiti and Gregory L. Richards
> "The Business of Free Software: Enterprise Incentives, Investment, 
> and Motivation in the Open Source Community,"
> HBS Working Paper 07-028,
> http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-028.pdf
> 
> "OSS is a business tool that has been used by a variety of 
> corporations for very logical purposes," notes Iansiti. "If you have 
> an environment in which part of the service you provide and the 
> product you sell can be given away for free, that changes the 
> dynamics of the industry. As a company, you will most likely spend 
> more time thinking about exactly what to give away and how to couple 
> it with complementary products and services than you do anything 
> else."
> 
-- 
Mr Anthony Hornby
Associate Director, Resources and Technology
Library and Information Access
Charles Darwin University (CRICOS 300K)
Phone: +61 8 8946 6011
Email: anthony.hornby at cdu.edu.au.no-spam
(remove the .no-spam)

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little 
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