On Why Open Source, Open Access, Open Anything, is Good

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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.-Abraham Lincoln

Open source. The very term sends people executives running, thinking of dropped profit margins. A threat they cannot deal with, when in truth, there is lots of money to be made with open source. Many programs and groups successfully do so, how? thur software support programs. But that’s not the only reason open source is good.

Open source gets your product out there and gets people to use and build towards it. smaller groups generally can’t profit for it, but adobe has made millions giving away acrobat reader for free. There are dozens of PDF readers and writers on the market, but everyone downloads adobe reader.

Other type of open platforming is now coming from Verizon. Verizon is “opening” its network allowing any phone as long as it meets their spec. That’s wonderful. You say you have the best network and many people think so, then you can allow people to switch on. For a fee. Hell, drop the fee and sell them apps that only work on verizon. You can take your phone anywhere but the apps stay or only work on verizon.

The above model of revenue sharing, or even access by price is not so strange. Face book hands out their api like candy, Apple is doing the same thing with Iphone APPs. Amazon has a been doing it for years. I can buy target stuff from Target, or thur Amazon. I will not be able to pull my apps, out of facebook, so i continue to use it. Apple keeps a record of all i’ve bought and downloaded so i never worry about getting or erasing my Iphone. I like shopping on Amazon, so why head over to target, i can use my amazon discounts and such here.

Basically what I am saying is that Open Anything, can be done correctly. Let’s call it Pie Slicing. Just take a small part of the pie and then allow people to do whatever as long as they follow the rules. Microsoft is trying to learn that, but i don’t think i want MS office on subscription. I barely want the office bloat i have now, why do i want to pay for it again when what i have serves me so well. I’ll use Open Office for my Day to Day writing. Trying to use the old outdated business model isn’t going to work. Giving it away for free only works if its’ actually good.

How’s that for an idea. Software that works.

OceansOfThought @ April 29, 2008