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by wizlb
6419 days ago
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Can you give an example of where it does make sense? I'll venture a guess that you probably think that it made sense for Digium to open source Asterisk. At first, it did seem to make sense since they made the telephony cards that it worked with the best. However look at them now. Sangoma, Pika, NxtVox and many other companies are making cheaper telephony cards that work just as well as Digium's do. Now what does Digium do? They start selling a closed source version of Asterisk that has more features in it than the open source one. Open source is really nice for users but not so much for long term business profits. |
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Simply put, I think open source can make sense in products where the benefits (contributions/fixes, goodwill, marketing, increased customer comfort and therefore sales) outweigh any downsides (clones, etc).
One reason I made the post to begin with is because I don't think there are enough examples out there. Not because they can't be successful, but because there is a culture of fear of open source. Fear that your product will be ripped off, fear that you'll lose control of its development, and so on.
In many cases, those fears are unfounded. So I'm trying to develop my particular product as one example of software where open source does make sense. And I hope other small business do so as well.