valinux goes propietary?

[Stefano Maffulli]

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 :-))

regards
stef (with his natural account down for a short circuit--lost server and 
backups--damn)

-- 
Stefano Maffulli aka Reed                   | Milano Linux User Group
http://www.zoomata.com a close-up on italy  | http://www.milug.org
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