I must admit I really like
Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog. He a great speaker and is always a highlight of JavaOne for me. He also has some great ideas on how to run a business. He is taking the drug pusher model to the next level. The Drug Pusher model is to give it away for free until the user is addicted, then charge them through.
This will not longer be called the Drug Pusher model. From now on, refer to it as the Schwartz Business model, which is: provide great products for free. Then, when your user is ready to prime-time, provide them with stellar support, which is a commodity which people will certainly be willing to pay for.
To quote Mr. Schwartz:
: "Because no Fortune 2000 customer on earth is going to run the heart of their enterprise with products that don't have someone's home number on the other end. And no developer or developing nation, presented with an equivalent or better free and open source product, is going to opt for a proprietary alternative.
Those two points are the market's reality. And having reviewed them today at length at a customer conference, with some of the largest telecommunications customers on earth, I only heard the strongest agreement. They all, after all, are prolific distributors of free handsets.
Betting against FOSS is like betting against gravity. And free software doesn't mean no revenue, it means no barriers to revenue. Just ask your carrier."