[ubuntu-za] Ubuntu and Mozilla, the inevitable alliance

Helge Reikeras helge.reikeras at gmail.com
Mon Jan 18 12:25:59 GMT 2010


On Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:17:21 +0200, Hilton Gibson  
<hilton.gibson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
> Whatever strategy is taken by them, developers need to eat. So I am
> hoping that they find a sustainable financial business model for open
> source software projects in the future.
>
> Does anybody on the list have ideas on a sustainable financial
> business model for open source software projects ?
>
> Cheers
>
> hg.
>
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Nic Roets <nroets at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Helge Reikeras  
>> <helge.reikeras at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Yeah. Of course, Canonical doesn't own Ubuntu and as such it's not  
>>> theirs
>>> to sell. If Canonical decides to make any decision the community  
>>> doesn't
>>> agree with, the community is free to continue development on it's own
>>> (potentially with another sponsor). However, the role played by  
>>> Canonical
>>> might be difficult to replace. I wouldn't be surprised if Google  
>>> decide to
>>> acquire Canonical. As with any acquisition we can only speculate what  
>>> the
>>> implication for the current values and culture at Canonical will be.
>>
>> It's not going to happen: The Google people are hardnosed businessmen.  
>> The
>> only reason why they are in Open Source is to make it difficult for
>> companies closer to the end user to replace their default search  
>> provider.
>> Companies closer to the end user include telcos, hardware manufacturers,
>> even MS.
>>
>> Furthermore, if Google buys Canonical or take a lead role in Ubuntu,  
>> they
>> can seriously damage their brand if something goes wrong in Linux land  
>> and
>> they did not do their best to stop it.
>>
>>
>> --
>> ubuntu-za mailing list
>> ubuntu-za at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-za
>>
>>
>
>
>

Although a bit dated, this article  
http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/tiemans.html by Michael  
Tiemann, co-founder of Cygnus Solutions and now Vice President of Open  
Source Affairs at Red Hat, gives a pretty good account of the open source  
business model.

- Helge


-- 
Helge Reikeras
http://www.google.com/profiles/helge.reikeras

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