Tag: money

Open Source and Software Strategy

Curt Monash at Monash Research pointed out some ongoing open source GPL issues for WordPress and the Thesis issue (Also see http://ma.tt/2009/04/oracle-and-open-source/ and  http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/switching-things-around/).

As a user of both going upwards of 2 years- I believe open source and GPL license enforcement are general parts of software strategy of most software companies nowadays. Some thoughts on  open source and software strategy-Thesis remains a very very popular theme and has earned upwards of 100,000 $ for its creator (estimate based on 20k plus installs and 60$ avg price)

  • Little guys like to give away code to get some satisfaction/ recognition, big guys give away free code only when its necessary or when they are not making money in that product segment anyway.
  • As Ethan Hunt said, ” Every Hero needs a Villian”. Every software (market share) war between players needs One Big Company Holding more market share and Open Source Strategy between other player who is not able to create in house code, so effectively out sources by creating open source project. But same open source propent rarely gives away the secret to its own money making project.
    • Examples- Google creates open source Android, but wont reveal its secret algorithm for search which drives its main profits,
    • Google again puts a paper for MapReduce but it’s Yahoo that champions Hadoop,
    • Apple creates open source projects (http://www.apple.com/opensource/) but wont give away its Operating Source codes (why?) which help people buys its more expensive hardware,
    • IBM who helped kickstart the whole proprietary code thing (remember MS DOS) is the new champion of open source (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/) and
    • Microsoft continues to spark open source debate but read http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/07/02/a-perspective-on-openness.aspx and  also http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/
    • SAS gives away a lot of open source code (Read Jim Davis , CMO SAS here , but will stick to Base SAS code (even though it seems to be making more money by verticals focus and data mining).
    • SPSS was the first big analytics company that helps supports R (open source stats software) but will cling to its own code on its softwares.
    • WordPress.org gives away its software (and I like Akismet just as well as blogging) for open source, but hey as anyone who is on WordPress.com knows how locked in you can get by its (pricy) platform.
    • Vendor Lock-in (wink wink price escalation) is the elephant in the room for Big Software Proprietary Companies.
    • SLA Quality, Maintenance and IP safety is the uh-oh for going in for open source software mostly.
  • Lack of IP protection for revenue models for open source code is the big bottleneck  for a lot of companies- as very few software users know what to do with source code if you give it to them anyways.
    • If companies were confident that they would still be earning same revenue and there would be less leakage or theft, they would gladly give away the source code.
    • Derivative softwares or extensions help popularize the original softwares.
      • Half Way Steps like Facebook Applications  the original big company to create a platform for third party creators),
      • IPhone Apps and Android Applications show success of creating APIs to help protect IP and software control while still giving some freedom to developers or alternate
      • User Interfaces to R in both SAS/IML and JMP is a similar example
  • Basically open source is mostly done by under dog while top dog mostly rakes in money ( and envy)
  • There is yet to a big commercial success in open source software, though they are very good open source softwares. Just as Google’s success helped establish advertising as an alternate ( and now dominant) revenue source for online companies , Open Source needs a big example of a company that made billions while giving source code away and still retaining control and direction of software strategy.
  • Open source people love to hate proprietary packages, yet there are more shades of grey (than black and white) and hypocrisy (read lies) within  the open source software movement than the regulated world of big software. People will be still people. Software is just a piece of code.  😉

(Art citation-http://gapingvoid.com/about/ and http://gapingvoidgallery.com/

Blogger’s Block and Better Blogging

Some tips for beating blogger’s block.

Patience -Everyone gets blogger ‘s block. This too shall pass .

Fermented Idea -When your ideas are hot , don’t publish immediately. Use the draft posts – they are there for a purpose.

Timing -Use and manipulate time stamps to space out your good posts.

Make your blog better by doing the following

Think and invest-Use free software for analysis at lower traffics and higher ,cost softwares for higher traffic.

Dos-Use wordpress – it is good. Or any software .But do avoid big big links.

Earn when you burn-Use ad sense or Yahoo or at least 1 ad software even though your blog is non commercial.

 Dont kid yourself-Free Blogging in my view is against the principles of economics as your time and your readers time has a value ” There is no such thing as a free lunch”

Work smart is better than work hard-Use basic Search Engine Optimization (also known as GBO or Google Bot Optimization after the Yahoo-Google deal).

The simple little things-Avoid spelling mistakes. .Use spell check.

First Impressions-Titles should be catchy but to the point.

Give The Reader a break-Use the RSS or Email subscriber to avoid hit and run visitors.

Parting Shots-Sum up the post in last two sentences.

Pictures vs a 1000 Words-Use at least one graphic per page to increase appeal. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Uh -Oh—Trust in God but use anti spam software.

Network on the Net-Read other blogs , comment . Praise lavishly and avoid criticism-leave that to the rest of the world. What goes around in the online world often comes around in the offline world.

 Techie Tip-Use the more <—-> tag in WordPress to build suspense in reader if he reads just the first four sentences. First impression will be the last impression.

Now that you have a better blog, get back to blogging….:)