""Indeed, I would go so far as to say that very few open source
startups will ever get anywhere near to $1 billion. Not because
they are incompetent, or because open source will 'fail' in any
sense. But because the economics of open source software –
and therefore the business dynamics – are so different from
those of traditional software that it simply won't be possible in
most markets." – Glyn Moody, "Why No Billion-Dollar Open
Source Companies?
"The explanation of why zero pure play open source vendors have
hit the one billion dollar revenue mark has never seemed, to me,
particularly complicated. The economics of open source are, as Glyn
notes above, fundamentally differentiated from the closed source
models that preceded it. Open source as an application development
model enjoys many advantages over proprietary, in-house
development; distribution and usage among them. But revenue
extraction has not traditionally been a strength, for obvious
reasons. When payment is optional, as it is with most open source
software, fewer users become commercial buyers. Next up, a study
proving that objects further away are harder to see."
