The Physical Boundaries of Open Source

Carlos Villela writes about "the impending doom". He points to an interesting statistic:

JBoss...They apparently own 37% of the J2EE Application Server market, if I read TSS correctly... they’ve got around 30 to 50 employees. [snip]
Isn’t there something wrong with this? I mean, you would’ve thought that a company that owned 37% of a market where there’s a f*ckload of cash flowing around like mad would be able to grow larger, presuming that the basic intent of every company is to grow. And I’m sure it is growing, but, still, there’s something fishy in this picture. Are they doing better than BEA? Certainly, in market share terms, but in terms of pocket depth, I would disagree.

One reason for Bill Gates tremendous wealth is that software can be replicated at practically no cost. In centuries before media the wealthy had a monopoly on land. Now if you didn't have land then it would be tough for you to feed yourself. It was hard for the landed to get wealthy working for themselves, so they farmed out the work. The equation was simple, own something exclusively (i.e. the land) and then replicate work (i.e. the laborers). In the digital world it is the same, that is own the copyrights to software, replicate the software. This time however, it is better than the old days, the virtual world has no limitation on one's capability to replicate. The only limitation is the physical world's ability to consume and that my friend is quite a big pie!

Now take away the monopoly and see what happens. Put it another way, take away private ownership and see what happens. We've seen this before in the Marxist philosophy. It of course had a lot of technical complications that made it quite difficult to get right. However, by removing ownership you begin to realize that its difficult to have a replication strategy.

Open Source ventures like JBoss are limited by the physical number of professionals who have the knowledge and can do the work. The only way to make money is through the fruits of your own labor. JBoss employess are of course working for someone, that is because the company owns the brand JBoss. That's how the people on the top get wealthy, however for those at the bottom. Well then, it's like being a sharecropper all over again.

Now here's an interesting exercise. Take a look at this list of " 46 Ways to Make Money off Open Source. Which one of them permits a virtual replication strategy? That is a strategy that isn't limited by the number of physical bodies one employs.