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Dear Jim and Mikael,
I'd like to support Jim's basic strategy, with a few suggested
modifications. I think the essence of open source software is the
distributed production/innovation it permits--as distinct from free
software. That suggests a way to start a national open source strategy, by
seeding university-based development centers--precisely the strategy that Free
Developers Network, an outgrowth of the Open Source Foundation, is about to
launch. Their concept for a viable business model for open source
software is that it need not be free, even if low cost--that a distributed
international network of developers would contribute to (and earn shared
income from sales of) a growing central corpus of code that would
be commercially marketed, but that would also be easy to modify or create local
adaptions and extensions to, because it is open source. Under this
approach, open source software still needs intellectual property protection--so
the policy approach is similar to that sought by Microsoft or other commercial
software vendors. But it generates the possibility of a lower cost commercial
alternative, with local participation and adaptation
capacity.
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