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What they did wrong....
... was to try and sell support for a product that has good free community support. It probably looked an easy job "Hey guys - this Postgre thing is all over the place and nobody is supporting it. We'll support it and be the only game in town" (fx: loud cheers of 'drinks all round!!!', meeting exits to the ABBA song Money, Money, Money, ...)

It is difficult to make money from the "supply" end of the open-source business, much easier at the "consumer" end of the chain. Even MySQL does not make a huge profit, but millions of companies and users make big profits employing MySQL databases.

Also remember that some companies release version 3 of a product whilst open-sourcing version 2 to get more market exposure so open source becomes another marketing channel. IBM even gave Cloudbase away so that it could be used easily with other IBM products.

Open source isn't one model of software development - it is a a range of development models and marketing techniques.
Posted by: bportlock   Posted on: 08/03/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use
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NBM'ers should be taking notes...  Spikey_Mike | 08/01/06
But...  rapson | 08/02/06
Translated, the business model doesn't work.  No_Ax_to_Grind | 08/01/06
You're so right  Michael Kelly | 08/01/06
Actually, the exact opposite it true  Sxooter_z | 08/03/06
Translated..  nomorems | 08/01/06
Lost in Translation  sher1 | 08/02/06
You're Wrong  Swashbuckler2 | 08/03/06
You are right  Boot_Agnostic | 08/03/06
What they did wrong....  bportlock | 08/03/06

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