Re: Mostly free software...

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

David Welton <davidw@master.debian.org> writes:

> Umm, I don't *want* to help my competitors.  Maybe, if it's not a core
> product, it won't be that important, but, if I spend a lot of money
> and time paying someone to develop really nice code, from scratch,
> that is central to my business, I'll be damned if I'll hand it over to
> the competition for free.

Not even if doing so meant that bugs might be found, that would
otherwise go undetected long enough to kill your business ?

How about if doing so meant that your development costs were much
lower ?  After all, when this takes off, you might just BE that
competitor, in which case creating your wonder software might only
require that you add 10% to something one of your competitors wrote.

How about if doing so meant that your maintenance costs (normally the
most costly part of any software) were shared amongst all your
competitors, along with some other people with similar needs who
happen not to be in competition with you ?

Chances are that the savings in development and maintenance costs
accrued by using the free software model would far outweigh any brief
competitive advantage you might enjoy by not freeing the source.  If
the software really gave you a competitive edge, you can be sure that
it won't take the competition long to work out how your doing it, and
write their own.

Cheers, Phil.