valinux goes propietary?

[Massimo Nuvoli]

"smaffulli at inwind.it" ha scritto:

> I think about all the people (I know personally a couple of them) that were investigating the possibility to release their new software under the GPL: our arguments are still valid, but the not-yet-convinced guys will interpret VA's move as symptom that Free Software simply cannot work as a business model. When Eazel went belly up I was not upset at all, but now with VA it's different. I thought VA had a solid business plan: they used to sell hardware and services, mostly.

VA is abandoning the hardware market, this seems to be the big black hole on the company in the first half of the year (not the free software), and is estimated that in the future 80% of business comes from sourceforge and OSDN (services?).
IMHO no one can think to do jump in a business without some security, and the not free software choice seems to be the emergency rope for VA.

So i think this is not a free software problem, this is a problem related to the VA focus on the linux-hardware, in a market where most of the very big company sells hardware with linux pre-installed this is a regular evolution. (this is also a problem but where is free hardware?)

IMHO this is a signal that Free Software and related services are a valid market and not the contrary.
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