Toolkit

Story: Proprietary software: A defence

• 
• 

Red Hat Profits up 35%...

Proprietary software WAS an extremely successful business model. However Microsoft took a strangle hold on the market and use various lock in techniques to hold onto customers. In doing so it became very successful while other companies were put out of business. One measure of how healthy a market is is how many major players there are. In desktop software there is currently only one major player, ergo the the market is unhealthy.

Large foreign software companies did not become "centres of software innovation using the revenue generation power of proprietary software". They became successful because they had the initial investment lacking in third world countries.

OSS can compete and is competing with proprietary software. As noted at the begiinning of this responce Red Hats profits are up 35% in a business model that does not depend on selling the software, just the support services.

• 
• 

• 
• 
• 

Full Talkback thread