[ubuntu-us-ma] Interesting concern about open-sourcing a website

[Ralph deGennaro]

HI Danny,

What you have encountered is actually the toughest question to answer, at
least in my experience.  Its the one that's brought up to me by many
people.  Especially those who don't have a service that is independent
(though helped by) the software they use.  I think a lot of it (the answer)
depends on how the "business idea" itself was started.  That and the
business model it adopts.  If I had more time, I'd think about it more and
try to explain my thoughts on how/what you sell and if/how it fits into
FOSS.

I guess the crux of many people I've talked to is how to "protect" their
business.  When they're looking for generic tools that are not business-idea
specific, its easy to explain the beauty, efficiency, maintainability,
sustainability of FOSS.  But when its some like what you are showing (the
little I can tell), its very hard.  The Darwinism of free-market society is
harsh.

The protection is necessary for the little guy to survive.  They have to
show how they're better then another company and not let the other company
damage their ability to generate income.  Many business people think nothing
of using another's idea to drown them out instead of working with them.

So for the person you were talking to, like Brian said, a good look at
licenses might be worth while.  One thing about GPL's, the hosting of
website and having users is not considered distribution.  I might be wrong
with GPLv3; and my tiredness my be making my head fuzzy otherwise.  I'm not
sure there is a FOSS license that would ensure that a competitors
capitalization from the sites work be shared back to them.  And certainly
not limiting in how much business a competitor can "take away" form the
original authors.  The is certainly the idea behind many proprietary
deals/licenses.

I guess part of the risk involved in open source is the risk that is worried
about.  And apparently what XBMC is effected by. Though I haven't looked in
a while, the XBMC project hasn't suffered too much; didn't they just have a
release?  But weighing the costs and benefits of sharing code is a difficult
analysis for anyone.

Maybe though a good discussion on the google group you setup would be good
to figure out something more FOSS friendly that meets the same concerns.  I
guess this is more universal then MA businesses, but we need to start
somewhere, and talking doesn't hurt.  :-)

Sorry if my email is babbling...

Best,
Rio


On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Danny Piccirillo <
danny.piccirillo at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> But there is still the risk of something like what happened to xbmc and
> boxee happening. Boxee is a fork and is VC backed so xbmc isn't making
> anything. Couldn't something similar happen to this website if it goes open
> source? This seems like a big concern that is probably a reason many
> projects don't go open source.
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 01:21, Martin Owens <doctormo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> You have to have a value add, if the value add is in the code, then the
>> only way reddit will notice and take functionality from the code is if
>> he already gets big enough to compete.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 2009-06-26 at 00:31 -0400, Danny Piccirillo wrote:
>> > I was talking to someone about open sourcing a project of theirs
>> > http://stocks29.homelinux.net:4000/ (cross between reddit and twitter)
>> >
>> >
>> > I wasn't sure how to address his concern about the possibility of
>> > someone using his code and killing his site. A site like reddit that
>> > already has a brand that he can't compete with could take his code and
>> > use it, or perhaps some aspiring entreprenuers with capital from VCs
>> > could "take the open source code, improve it, and put more money into
>> > marketing [...], pull contacts in the media [...], and leave [him]
>> > with no avenue for profit
>> >
>> >
>> > I've never heard of anything like this happening, but i'm also not sure
>> what (if anything) guarantees that it won't. Anybody have an answer to this?
>> >
>> > --
>> > http://www.google.com/profiles/danny.piccirillo
>> >
>>
>>
>
>
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>
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