From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00, HK_RANDOM_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,afb4d45672b1e262 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!news.glorb.com!cycny01.gnilink.net!spamkiller.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!trnddc07.POSTED!20ae255c!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Justin Gombos Subject: Re: Making money on open source, if not by selling _support_, then References: <7NOdne-iYtWmIafZnZ2dnUVZ_tWdnZ2d@megapath.net> <292bf$443bb4e4$45491254$20549@KNOLOGY.NET> <739b0$443e4f69$45491254$22018@KNOLOGY.NET> User-Agent: slrn/0.9.8.1 (Linux) Message-ID: Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:49:27 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.44.77.228 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verizon.net X-Trace: trnddc07 1144982967 129.44.77.228 (Thu, 13 Apr 2006 22:49:27 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 22:49:27 EDT Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3827 Date: 2006-04-14T02:49:27+00:00 List-Id: On 2006-04-13, Larry Kilgallen wrote: > In article , Justin Gombos writes: > > If you don't have that assurance, then you did a bad job of > reviewing the contract you signed. Sure, with the closed source route, your degree of support reassurance is limited by the quality of the contract. Moreover, even the best of contracts cannot guarantee the vendor remains in business. If they close, your only hope is that they turn over the source code (assuming your contract had this foresight). Yet still, they ultimately don't have to comply with the contract in the end, as the actual consequences of non-compliance might be preferred. I've been involved in cases where a support contract was violated. We were careful to inject a price control, so the vendor could not excessively jack up the price of support down the line. They did so anyway, because they had no choice. If they did not overcharge, they would have lost money due to unforeseen expenses on their end. We could have sued, and perhaps drive them out of business, but we were dealing with diminishing returns at this point. Had the product been open source, we would have had the option of simply switching to a better competitor. It's more favorable to have natural guarantees than to depend on folks following some artifical rules (since contractual compliance is optional in a strict sense). If things go poorly, and you're fortunate enough to be on the right side of the contract, you're still dependant on favorable litigation results. -- PM instructions: do a C4esar Ciph3r on my address; retain punctuation.