[Ilugc] Is the proprietary camp winning ?
- From: binand@xxxxxxxxx (Binand Sethumadhavan)
- Date: Fri Oct 13 12:12:27 2006
On 13/10/06, Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
subject - there are any number of instances - infrae, mysql,
edgewall, mahiti, deeproot, srijan, sql-ledger, katipo, operational
dynamics, collabnet, canonical, redhat, novell, ibm ... you want more?
Well, just putting up a list of companies is of course not enough. Are
these companies making their shareholders any money or running at
massive losses? Of course we can't say anything about the non-public
companies in that list, so let us ask the alternative question, are
any of the above companies public?
The last three are, and:
IBM - FOSS is only a (small?) part of their business. Consulting is
their biggest revenue earner, followed by hardware. Massive, blue chip
company.
Redhat - seems to be doing well (has a P/E of 57, and double the
market cap of Novell). If I might say so, an outstanding success of a
FOSS-based business plan (probably the only one).
Novell - FOSS is big for them, but acquired. Have other products too,
but none with any chance of survival (Groupwise has all but been
killed by Exchange).
Anyone knows if any of the other companies above are public so that we
can see for ourselves whether they are successful FOSS-based
businesses?
Binand
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