The Simple Economics of Open Source

[Raffael Cavallaro]

> Correlation doesn't imply causality, and when it does, it's easy to get
> causality backwards if you're not careful.  You could get misled into
> spending lots of money to get rich if you just look at the
> correlations.

In the case of cash cows, we don't need a causal argument at all. It's
simply enough to note that people don't share them. Whether they became cash
cows because they weren't shared (possible, though not likely), or they are
not now shared because they have become cash cows doesn't really matter. The
lesson for open source is the same - expect only commodity items, known to
many, to be open sourced. Expect lucrative cash cows to remain closed.

Ralph

-- 

Raffael Cavallaro, Ph.D.
raffael at mediaone.net