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January 16, 2008

Comments

tom s.

I agree with your complaint. Nicholas Carr calls the model "sharecropping the web" and I think he has it right. See here: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/sharecropping_t.php.

But I would not say I'm opposed to open source. Without C++, Berkeley Unix, and so on where would computing be? I just think that there are a lot of scam artists (individual and corporate) who use people's input and profit from it, as you say. Another example was Amazon's purchase of IMDB.

As for Sun charging for MySQL, well it's not only open source products that are given for free is it? There are closed-source products given away to sell hardware (eg, software for Windows Mobile) and consulting. I'm sure Sun will be happy to charge a bundle to their corporate users and let it go for free to people who don't need support and responsiveness. So I think I disagree with you there as well. Two out of three.

Interesting post though. Cheers.

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