On Feb 1, 2007, at 8:29 AM, Colin Brace wrote:
> Where is the bubble?
The name - and I'm not kidding - to start with. MySQL sounds a lot like MySpace. Investors will buy the stock for that alone.
But that aside, Carrol's right about the internal combustion engine. What's the big deal about open source in this case? MySQL Enterprise Platinum goes for $4,995 per server per year. Which may be a reasonable price, I dunno. But it sure sounds like capitalist social relations to me. Even the low-end price, $595, ain't cheap.
On your complaint about snarky responses on FOSS. I've filed three economic objections to its use as a model, none of them snarky: 1) It typically presupposes high levels of expertise in users. Cf. Joanna's example of her daughter surfing the web within 10 minutes of her taking it out of the box. 2) FOSS relies heavily on free riding on the resources of employers (and parents, as has, nonjokingly, been pointed out). People cannot pay the rent trading code, nor can they pay for the computers and Internet connections necessary to develop and distribute it. 3) Software is a highly unusual product - infinitely reproducible and near-zero cost. It is the nonrival good par excellence. How can the model be translated into the production and exchange of peaches, health care, or transportation? People in the computer world have a really exaggerated idea of the size of the sector. It's actually rather small.
Doug