[sclug] Using open source to make money on generic PCs (article)

[Roland Turner SCLUG]

On Mon, 2006-06-12 at 14:26 +0100, Alex Butcher wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Jun 2006, Roland Turner (SCLUG) wrote:

> > The corollary for anyone planning to run a business doing this is pretty
> > straightforward: make good products or go broke!
> 
> Eventually, yes, but it doesn't stop cynical/boneheaded (delete as
> applicable) idiots from attempting to exploit market exteralities and
> leaving the mess for volunteers to clean up (especially after they've
> actually /gone/ broke).

True enough. On this I agree, any bonehead doing this is not "playing
the game", although I believe that pity is a more appropriate response
than disdain.

Even in this case though, switching FOSS is relatively painless.
Consider a related case: Corel Linux. I don't think that Corel was being
boneheaded or cynical, it just made a bad bet. Cleaning up the mess
(when Corel gave up) involved installing a still-supported distribution.
In Corel's particular case, tweaking /etc/apt/sources.list to point to
Debian/woody and "apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade" was most of
what was required, but a re-install of RedHat or SuSE would also have
been within reason. This sort of stuff seems a tolerable cost for the
FOSS communities to bear in order to facilitate commercial
experimentation, and the community-wide benefits that flow from
successful experiments.

- Raz