[bunderbunder]

Which raises an interesting question - how do you make money on a platform like this?

I've been wondering because I think that my preferred managed environment (.NET) is doomed if Microsoft continues keeping it tied to Windows. On the Microsoft side, I suspect that Microsoft's market share in the server and enterprise space is going to continue dwindling for the foreseeable future, which means that their current plan for making profit is far from certain. But neither Sun nor Oracle seem to have figured out a way to distribute Java for free to the world at large and make a profit off of it, and it's hard to imagine that Microsoft is any more capable of pulling that rabbit out of its hat.

Perhaps the trick is that you don't try to make money on it, at least not directly. And there's a great project out there that's trying to do it that way. But, well. . . . ugh. I love Mono; it seems like it has everything going for it. From a technical standpoint it's been rapidly closing the gap with Microsoft's implementation, which I suspect means it's probably already ahead of the Java platform in many respects. The flagship language is certainly way ahead. And it has the singular distinction of being the only Free platform in this sector, which would make you think that folks would be extremely interested in seeing it win. Why that doesn't seem to be the case continues to mystify me. I know it's still got a few Big Business cooties on it, but it's got way, way, way less of them than Java does.

[dredmorbius]

> Which raises an interesting question - how do you make money on a platform like this?

Professional services. Hardware sales. Turnkey solutions (you want to support industry X using Java? ...). Development tools (to the extent not provided by third-parties). Certification/compliance. Associated products (nice Java app you've got there, need a database to go with it?).

Here's a thing: making money off of software by itself is hard. One of the lost messages in the recent trash-talking of Microsoft is that the fall of the House of Redmond also means the fall of software as a standalone, unit-sold, high-value product. Nobody but nobody else operates this way, certainly none of the current tech leaders: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. Two sell ads, two sell things. None sells software.

[piokoch]

> Which raises an interesting question - how do you make money on a platform like this?

Sell trainigns, certification, support (QA tested fixes for bugs that affected you before they are released to the public). SUN was doing all of that and was pretty successful. The hardware part of the bussiness failed them because of flood of cheap comodity servers.

[ars]

> Which raises an interesting question - how do you make money on a platform like this?

Traditionally you sell a development environment. You release a command line compiler for free, and a full development GUI for money.

Then you make some useful (but non core) libraries and sell those as addons.

[lgieron]

I always thought the Microsoft makes money with server-side .NET by making people buy expensive Windows server licences. The whole .NET platform can be viewed as a "feature" of their server products, differentiating them from Unix-family alternatives.

[pjmlp]

This is why if possible, one should stay away from company driven languages.