The Simple Economics of Open Source

Raffael Cavallaro raffael at mediaone.net
Sun Apr 23 23:35:21 EDT 2000


> Correlation doesn't imply causality, and when it does, it's easy to get
> causality backwards if you're not careful.  You could get misled into
> spending lots of money to get rich if you just look at the
> correlations.

In the case of cash cows, we don't need a causal argument at all. It's
simply enough to note that people don't share them. Whether they became 
cash cows because they weren't shared (possible, though not likely), or 
they are not now shared because they have become cash cows doesn't 
really matter. The lesson for open source is the same - expect only 
commodity items, known to many, to be open sourced. Expect lucrative 
cash cows to remain closed.

Ralph

-- 

Raffael Cavallaro, Ph.D.
raffael at mediaone.net

-- 

Raffael Cavallaro, Ph.D.
raffael at mediaone.net



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