Means and ends in open source
,----[ Quote ]
| Open source, by its nature, drives down pure software revenues. You
| can put some of those revenues into other bins, you can call them support,
| or contract programming, or services, but over time recurring product
| revenues wither.
|
| If software is just a means to a larger end, this is not a problem. It's
| an opportunity, because for you software is a cost. This is true for
| customers, and for companies like IBM that make software part of a
| larger sale.
|
| But for dedicated software companies, for those who depend on software
| as the end of their business, open source is indeed a threat. It
| threatens their basic business model. It means change.
|
| But it's business evolution in action.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=846
|
|
