[school-discuss] Software Revenue Streams was: Micro$oft: Weaker or Sneakier?

["Les R" <openadmin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Daniel / Joel,

An ad revenue stream is one source.

Another revenue stream would be Software as Service.

You install software  on your computer and then pay get monthly,
yearly updates / right to use OR you use it on the web as an
application. This is another source for companies, developers, etc.

Another would be Software as Object.

You buy a box of air and a CD/DVD. You install it on your computer and
use it as long as it provides service. At some point other or newer
software looks better or your software is missing a component you need
on a new O/S,etc and you buy another Software Object.

The first 2 approaches provide a smoother revenue stream and the third
is more 'choppy' from a company point of view.

--------------
What about the 'fitness' of the software that we need for our,
otherwise, expensive doorstops?

You, as the user, are at the mercies of  whatever the vendors are
selling, either as Service or Object. It is the same whether you are
given an unchangeable opaque binary file for the object or are given
some source code but with a restrictive license. However, given the
source code, you could have some control over making changes to it for
your own use and in that sense would have the ability to continue
having the software reflect your needs.

Obviously, a better solution would be to pool your efforts with others
so that as a group you could make the software reflective of the needs
of the entire group. At the same time, like any community
organization, the amount of work done by any one individual would
decrease. This assumes a licensing practice that will allow this kind
of community work to happen.

Open Admin for Schools is still pretty much in the Free as in Beer
department, and is not yet moving too far towards the  Software as
Community yet. However things are improving, and I suspect more will
happen as we move forwards with language specific versions of OA.

From the revenue standpoint, I can get paid by:
a) Charging a yearly support contract  - Software as Service
b) Charging for development of features, etc. - Software as Object
c) Charging for a hosted version with additional features - again
Software as Service.

However, from a community standpoint, OA is pretty much :
 Software as Gift Culture
since the school divisions that pay/paid me have allowed this software
to be developed under an open source license. (and are mainly Catholic
school divisions). As well, all of the documentation and many
features, updates, etc. are basically unpaid, since I don't want
released software with my name on it that doesn't work as advertised!
(grin)

My 2 cents CDN.


Les Richardson
Open Admin for Schools
SK, Canada









2008/6/21 Daniel Howard <dhhoward@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Actually Joel, if you think about it, it points to the success of FOSS: if
> software becomes free, then the only way M$ can survive is to move to an
> ad-based revenue, hence the interest in Yahoo, Facebook etc.
>
> Daniel
>
> Joel Kahn wrote:
>>
>> I took notice of the following recent story:
>>
>> http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080620/microsoft_internet.html
>>
>> The quote from Steve Balmer especially
>> caught my eye:
>>
>> "At the end of the day, this is about
>> the ad platform. This is not about
>> just any one of the applications."
>>
>> Any public statement from any of the
>> M$ top dogs must, of course, be very
>> carefully examined for all of its
>> potential Byzantine meanings, and this
>> is especially true when we see such
>> obscure doubletalk as this. Is M$ really
>> adopting a more cautious policy, or is
>> it just planning some mischief even more
>> devious than its past stunts?
>>
>> Joel
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Daniel Howard
> President and CEO
> Georgia Open Source Education Foundation
>