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The Mozilla Foundation just created a wholly-owned commercial sub that will be responsible for "productizing and distributing" Mozilla's open source programs. The sub will have 36 of Mozilla's 39 employees, so the short of it is that Mozilla is going commercial.
However, fear not. The products will remain free and open, but the change will allow for some unspecified "revenue-generating activities" to support the foundation's mission.
The announcement makes clear that the corporation will not go public, nor will it offer employees options.
This is a very strange sort of morality. Revenue generation of some kinds, but not others, is permitted. Employees are (presumably) paid, but this must not be funded by selling the product. And entrepreneurial profit-for-risk is eschewed. It is a hopeless muddle, not just as a matter of business, or economics, but as a matter of morality. I feel like I am listening to the Imam explain why interest is taboo.
I am also reminded of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with Eric Schmidt of Google:
After a seminar . . . I met a representative of Google and fell into a conversation reminiscent of Who’s On First. I said Google is a great search engine and it should make me and others pay for using it. He assured me that the company has no intention of charging. I responded that its value to me far exceeds the amount of a modest fee, and if the company charged then it could spend the proceeds doing even more good things, and I would get even more surplus value. He answered that I need not worry because they are making money from ads and other services and will not make users pay. I said I worried that they might not be making enough money.
He edged away, keeping a wary eye on this madman Mozilla guys: You make a great product! Consumers should be happy to pay for it! You should be proud to take their money and plow it into more great products! Why are you depriving me of the chance to pay you, and thus get even more benefits? Why do you hate me?
As I continued in the piece on the Schmidt conversation:
Consumers should want to pay for intellectual property. Only in such a system – a market – can they transmit to producers the proper incentives to provide goods and services of the quantity and quality that they (the consumers) desire. So they want to express their preferences directly with money, not force purveyors of useful services to cadge dimes from advertisers or patrons.
posted by James DeLong @ 2:40 PM |
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