...and now another positive financial impact of F/OSS
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| vainrveenr May 11, 2008 7:44 AM EDT |
On creating wealth and jobs, Dan Burcaw writes
Quoting:Nobody talks about the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of jobs that exist because of Open Source. But Andy wants his billionaire. Only then will Open Source be validated. I am certain that the movement has created tangible and intangible value that is more widespread and long-term in impact than one billionaire. There are few hard-and-fast stats on this, however, if one additionally includes the less quantified _indirect_ financial effects of F/OSS, then this affects exponentially more than just the "hundreds of thousands of jobs that exist because of Open Source". Divide-and-conquer indeed, Dan. |
| Bob_Robertson May 11, 2008 8:04 AM EDT |
With the Federal Reserve printing money at Bernenke speeds, not to worry, we'll all be billionares soon enough. |
| DiBosco May 11, 2008 9:57 AM EDT |
The fact that there are no billionaires is a good thing. When people earn more money than they can ever spend in their life it's just obscene. I hate this idea that you have to make stupid amounts of money to be seen to be successful; humans are capable of such shameful greed. Yeah, I know, I sound like terrible old hippy, but you know what? I don't care. |
| tuxchick May 11, 2008 10:18 AM EDT |
The main benefit of being obscenely wealthy is you can emit the most idiotic pronouncements, knowing that you're spouting nonsense, and everyone pretends that you're speaking pure brilliance. You'll get quoted and interviewed and admired no matter how corrupt you are. I could see having some fun with it. |
| dinotrac May 11, 2008 12:09 PM EDT |
Ummm..... Aren't we overlooking the obvious here? And what is this not Open Source Billionaire crap? You don't make money from free software, you make money doing the things free software lets you do -- including, but not limited to, products that incorporate free software. I will give you a little hint about a little once-upon-a-startup whose business model would not have worked without the freedom to innovate and implement that free software provides. You may have heard of it, and I believe a few people have made money from it. Pssst!! Buddy!!! Google. |
| tuxchick May 11, 2008 1:26 PM EDT |
Perfect example, dino. And see how quickly they break their vow of "do no evil" by putting the entire world on the Internet with Google Streetview. How quickly the rot sets in...from idealistic college students to "I am more special than you" billionaires in record time. Or maybe they were always heedless of basic privacy considerations and manners and just itching for the chance to implement some large-scale voyeurism. It's scary enough how they've become the largest data collector in the world, with no oversight or accountability. Here's a related challenge: name one single for-profit company that isn't hell-bent on violating us in every way possible, and offers good-quality products to help us protect ourselves from the Brins and Pages and other insane rapacious tech tycoons of the world. Let's see, there's PGP, and Mr. Zimmerman even released a GPL version just for us peons. Any others? Those ridiculous secuarity USB keys that a child can crack in a minute don't count. |
| dinotrac May 11, 2008 5:04 PM EDT |
TC - Sure. I can name... Hmmmmmmmm. Well, none. |
| gus3 May 11, 2008 8:19 PM EDT |
@tc: Not to mention their China deal. /hate hate hate |
| hkwint May 12, 2008 3:40 AM EDT |
Poor guy, 'There will be no open-source billionaires'. Did he miss that both Microsoft and Sun opened the source to some of their software? Anyway, if billionaires exist in some company it shows that company is not able to spend its money efficiently in my opinion, and on the other hand it shows the customer pays far more than needed - only to make someone a billionaire. If a billion went to the KDE project, a lot of usefull things would have been done / could be done with it. If it went to Bill Gates, it's invested in dirty plants in Africa making the people in Africa ill, or if it was invested in Microsoft nothing useful happens (only some propaganda). So if you'd ask me, the existence of billionaires in a certain line of business shows the failure of capitalism to divide wealth in the most efficient way. Uhm, well, nothing new here. Time to get on with my life... |
| number6x May 12, 2008 5:57 AM EDT |
Open Source makes the companies that use it more profitable by reducing their cost of doing business. So 'Open Source Billionaires' will be users of Open Source, not sellers. Like the Google guys. They would not be billionaires if they used Windows to build Google. They would probably just be out of business. |
| vainrveenr May 12, 2008 7:46 AM EDT |
Certainly one can quote the Google guys as one of THE most currently successful billionaire-type companies using predominantly F/OSS to develop and sell its services. At the same time, consider some of the wealth-and-job-related stats for SMALL players (fractions of billions), such those within the LXer post by Howard Fosdick, 'Running a business on desktop Linux' found at http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/102786/index.html Self-employed in the U.S.: Projection of more than 20 million at the present time (from http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/bu...) Small business enitities in the U.S. Projection of more than 25 million at the present time (from http://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/aboutsb/sbfacts/sbnumber.h...) And these numbers for these two employment divisions may very well be conservative projections, which then stresses the exciting possibilities of the continued future CUMULATIVE financial effects of F/OSS spreading well past the confined financial effects of those "one or two billionaires". Burcaw has already mentioned this in his piece, and Fosdick details in his how this is already being done with F/OSS (the latter's focus is on Ubuntu Linux). The key point here is the ongoing cumulative effect of non-billionaire F/OSS users. Quoting:Open Source makes the companies that use it more profitable by reducing their cost of doing business. So 'Open Source Billionaires' will be users of Open Source, not sellers...... and each hurdle that blocks profitability and productivity gets broken down both for new Open Source adopters and for Open Source deployments in mixed Open Source and proprietary-product environments. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!