[conspire] Speculation on derivatives won't save your freedom (was: ...Flattr...)

[Don Marti]

begin Adrien Lamothe quotation of Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 12:28:47PM -0800:

> > How often could you do that before losing users or kicking off a fork?
> > A pure speculator might hype an insignificant or invalid bug, but a
> > maintainer with time invested in learning the software would be
> > unlikely to reduce the future market by pulling stunts.
> 
> I feel really fortunate that IBM needed an operating system to compete with Sun and consequently backed Linux and continues to spend millions of dollars to fund development and patent defense to protect it. Enlightened self-interest can be a wonderful thing.

"Giant Corporation A takes potshots at Giant
Corporation B's cash cow" is great for Linux and
Eclipse, but it doesn't address problems at the
level of "I can't remove the clock from the toolbar
in GNOME 3.0".  

We already know that "commoditize the complement" (
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
) and "GitHub is the new resume" (
http://code.dblock.org/github-is-your-new-resume
) work.  Are there any other market mechanisms that
might apply?

-- 
Don Marti                    
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti at zgp.org