Betting your income on free software

“At least it’s not customized” is a wonderful Shark Tank column showing what happens when a business makes their technology choices out of fear.

It also indirectly drives home the point that free software is economically viable if you turn the market model of proprietary software inside out: rather than having a vendor selling a commercial product, the customer picks a free software product and buys customization work on it from any developers. This benefits

• the customer, who can get the specific features they need, which is nigh impossible in the vendor-centric model,
• the developers, who can keep themselves fed,
• and the other users of the product, assuming the customizations are made available publicly.

For this model to work, of course, a sufficient number of customizations need to be contributed back to the community – despite the fact that the community includes competitors.

As a result, this model is less likely to be adopted in vertical markets, where the community consists mostly of competitors, not because it wouldn’t work but simply due to greed. Too many players will want to keep developments they paid for to themselves, which is deadly for a free software project. But then, proprietary software and vertical markets are already a good match. It is in a horizontal market such as operating systems that a proprietary software product’s dominance is harmful.