Which DUAL Licence should I choose.

[dennis byron]

I haven't run the numbers in a few years but IBM Software Group recognizes a 
large share of its revenue through "sales" to IBM Global Services and/or via 
bundling into (boy, there's an old word--but I'm an old guy) into sales of 
IBM systems.

So the original claim is most likely still accurate. Sure applies to the new 
Oracle and definitely all the companies that are now called Infor. Probably 
not true yet for Symantec, Intuit and Sage but they'd like to make it true. 
Microsoft is getting away from all software but not to services as the term 
is typically used (more like the timesharing--to drop another old word).

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alexandre Terekhov" <alexandre.terekhov at yahoo.de>
To: "Ben Tilly" <btilly at gmail.com>; "Tzeng, Nigel H." 
<Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu>
Cc: "License Discuss" <license-discuss at opensource.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: Which DUAL Licence should I choose.


> software sales than anything else. The other 9 all had
> multiple revenue streams but made more money from software
> consulting than anything else they did with software.
> (Several, such as IBM, ...

Eh, IBM?

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/30-Reasons-Why-Software-Rules-at-IBM-279185/

"Once the neglected stepchild of IBM's colossal services business and 
systems unit, IBM Software is now a huge profit driver for Big Blue. Indeed, 
IBM's Software Group now competes with IBM Global Services as the top money 
maker for the company. Over the past decade, IBM has transformed its 
business model as the company shifted to higher value areas of software, 
improved efficiencies of its business and invested in long-term 
opportunities. This slide show identifies 30 reasons why software is big 
business at IBM."

----- Ursprüngliche Message -----
Von: Ben Tilly <btilly at gmail.com>
An: "Tzeng, Nigel H." <Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu>
Cc: License Discuss <license-discuss at opensource.org>
Gesendet: 21:41 Montag, 8.August 2011
Betreff: Re: Which DUAL Licence should I choose.

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 11:18 AM, Tzeng, Nigel H. <Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu> 
wrote:
[...]
> While charging for software products may not be the only way to make money
> on software, it is a/the dominant one and highly effective. There is also
> middle ground between proprietary and F/LOSS. OSI can concede that
> territory or not but CC has elected to embrace it and I think to good
> benefit to their commons even with some legal nebulosity of the NC clause.
[...]

Really? A decade ago Karsten Self did an interesting analysis. He
took the 10 largest software companies by revenue, and used public
data streams to figure out the source of their revenue. Of the 10
only one (Microsoft, at the time the biggest) made more money from
software sales than anything else. The other 9 all had multiple
revenue streams but made more money from software consulting than
anything else they did with software. (Several, such as IBM, had
significant hardware revenue. He excluded those revenue streams as
well.)

I would expect an attempt to repeat the analysis with current
companies to come to similar conclusions. As a result I believe that
the charging for software products is not the dominante way to make
money from software. It is merely the most obvious and visible.

But this is all a diversion. This list is meant for discussion about
software licenses, and not discussions of software economics and
politics. So I'll bow out of the discussion now.