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The Open Road

Read all 'Roy Russo' posts in The Open Road

July 16, 2007 8:43 PM PDT

Open-source vendors: Monopolies waiting to happen?

6 comments

~~JBoss developer~~ Loopfuse co-founder [I must have been very, very tired when I called Roy a JBoss developer] Roy Russo wonders if all open-source companies are de facto monopolistic. Like many others that I respect (Dave Rosenberg, Lonn Johnston, President Bush, Oscar the Grouch), Russo says any market ultimately has room for only one purveyor of free software. He writes:

(Open-source software) companies focusing on proprietary competition win out in the end, but if history is a guide, they also manage to squash their own OSS competitors by doing so.

So much for peace, love and open source.

Topics:: Odds and Ends,; Startups

Tags:: Loopfuse,; Roy Russo,; open source,; monopoly

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About The Open Road

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to the Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

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