"Open Source is not economically viable"
OK, so Linux as a technical product may continue to exist, but if companies cannot make money from it (as is seemingly evidenced by the woes of the Linux companies today), then it's another great technical success that is a commercial failure. History is littered with such examples. Linux will never go anywhere unless people can make money off it.
Now here's an argument even Open Source sympathisers have trouble with, -- the assumption that money must be made for Open Source to succeed. However, the argument is incomplete because it chooses to concentrate on the supply side alone, without regard to the demand side.
While it may well be true that no one can make money from Open Source, that should only serve to discourage
suppliers of software. On the demand side, however,
consumers are saving tons of money by using Open Source. Since a penny saved is a penny earned, there is a strong economic basis for the success of Open Source after all. Someone is saving money, and they will fight to keep those savings.
The demand side is the one that should drag the rest of the market, kicking and screaming, to a regime of drastically lower prices. Vendors will see their margins shrink, many will close down, newer, leaner ones will spring up, vendors in other market segments will provide software, and eventually, the market will adjust itself to the new reality. Dollar volumes will go down even as unit volumes go up. The transition could be quite painful for suppliers of software, but no law of economics says it cannot happen. It is not a law of nature that vendors must continue to make the revenues and profits they are used to.
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