valinux goes propietary?

[Massimo Nuvoli]

Stefano Maffulli ha scritto:

> On Saturday 25 August 2001 20:56, Wim De Smet wrote:
> > As reported on cnet:
> > http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6954900.html
> > VA Linux is going to sell propietary modules in the SourceForge Enterprise
> > Edition. I guess this is pretty bad for free software, just wanted to alert
> > people of it.
>
>
> Given the bad situation on the computer market, I guess more and more
> companies will go back to more classic and therefore "safe" business models.
> This will be especially true for those companies that jumped on the software
> libre band wagon just following the wave of Linux popularity.
> Investors in Wall Street want just be reassured and IMHO VA Linux is doing
> that: they're saying "Well, do you guys want us to use a better proven
> business model? Here we are".
> I think this is also bad for the advocates of software libre: it won't be
> easy now to find successful stories to talk about during conferences, aside
> some very good old known names :-(
> We'll see what happens, though: I still think that it doesn't make any sense
> to try to sell proprietary extensions to software, but "old" economy rules
> force new companies to act old way. This is the key, I think... but we go off
> topic if I start :-))

Good analisys, but there is something missing, the problem is not "yeah my
company is doing free software so the investors are preoccupied", the problem is
that the "old economy" is trying to put the "free software economy" out of his
market (this is a big problem and not only on the software).

In the free software economy is a bad thing to ave a big company like "VA" trying
to put money on the free software and obtain something like a typical "old
economy" result, money and proprietary extensions (jump on the free software
train just following the wave of Linux popularity can be something like this).

IMHO this is only a signal, the business model of the old economy cannot be mixed
with the new model, this with big company, where Wall Street is important and
when Wall Street dont wants the new model :-)

The great successful history is "nobody can delete the freedom of the software,
if the software is free", VA can do proprietary extensions, someone in the world
can do the same proprietary extensions in free software.

:-)