The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Limiting the Crowd to their own time at their own expense: the open community's distate for commerce"

Yep Skep

Rodrigo Flores — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:10:25 +0000

In the service catalog entry, some busy body removed links to my blog and community, but left the link to my book on Amazon. So rather than get access to free advice and writing, they are directed to the $59 book. I couldn't do it better myself; I wouldn't do it either.

So let us all sigh together. I like Wikipedia and Open source is cool; I use it all the time. There thousands of commercial entries in Wikipedia. For example, books and music get pages and pages. Toothpaste less.

But when it comes to IT vendors - watch out. We want nothing from vendors there. I see this problem also with some people in ITSMF who want it to be non-commercial (whatever that means), but hit us up for sponsorships. Very funny.

But it's individuals doing this, not institutions; if I had the time and interest, I'd correct the wikipedia entry. I have neither. My fights are somewhere else.

I'm at peace.
Tx for venting this piece. It's a needed conversation in the ITSMf space.

Oops, don't tell Wikipolicia

Red Pineapple — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:55:02 +0000

On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_centre my blog is reference 32. Don't know how it happened but don't tell Wikipolicia...

You are offended too easily

buraddo — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:54:55 +0000

Skep,

Pushing the boundaries of commercialism for "OpenSource" related business will always draw comment. Springsource, MySQL, everybody comes across it from time to time. Its a result of being a new phenomena of business. There will always be the religion of free (free as in speech) vs. the business of Open Source.

The basic premise of OpenSource as a business though is that you build a community around something that is "free" to gain adoption and then you charge for things that are the next link in the value chain for that core resource. Services for support, or deployment are classic in the Open Source software world.

Take a look at the blog post by the 451 group on "The Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits", its good food for thought.

Asking money before any value is proven is contrary to the learning to this point. OpenSource is fundamentally an adoption led market and not a proactive selling one. People choose to adopt because of the proven value which is free, and then monetize to build on that value. Not saying its wrong, but if your adoption is low, then maybe the lesson is there. Or maybe you are right and its just ahead of its time :)

Brad Vaughan

The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Limiting the Crowd to their own time at their own expense: the open community&#039;s distate for commerce"

Yep Skep

Oops, don't tell Wikipolicia

You are offended too easily

The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Limiting the Crowd to their own time at their own expense: the open community's distate for commerce"