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I agree with the statemeent that the model is broken. What do you get for
developing open source, but a few users? A few developers may make a few
dollars, but most is developed without earning anything. It is free for the user/customer.
But "free" just means "somebody else pays": The developer. And how long time will
he think it is fun to do that? Give away his spare time for "zero reward"?

I don't agree that most open source is great code. Most of the open source I see, is utterly crappy!
Inflexible API's or App's, bad documentation etc. I am slowly looking more and more to commercial
software... it tends to have a bit higher standards in my experience (just a personal opinion/experience).

@Jakb
"I don't agree that most open source is great code. Most of the open source I see, is utterly crappy!
Inflexible API's or App's, bad documentation etc"

I've seen good and bad code/docs in both open source and commercial. Some of the stuff in the open source world is sensational, but perhaps generally coupled with some sort of commercial enterprise. Have a look at the smartclient docs which are LGPL and phenomenal quality: http://www.smartclient.com/docs/6.5.1/a/b/c/go.html#group..docViewerHelp
Spring is another good example of good docs / code.

Andrew

I still think there's a tendency for open source code to be of better quality than closed source, simply because the source is out there to be read and analyzed by the people. While that does not automatically make open source code better, it certainly does not make it worse!

Shoddy analysis. He mentions MySQL as an example of a company where the service/support model is unlikely to work, but in fact MySQL also licenses their software. I don't kow if they make any money on this, but to not mention this makes the analysis seem sloppy.

Stuart Cohen writes about Open Source as if it was a business model. Open Source never was a business model, because it only says something about the openness of source code. It says nothing about the money.

'Supporting Open Source' is a business model.

"If Red Hat relied on supporting the Linux kernel, it would go out of business simply because the code is so sound."

No, because the kernel itself is not directly relevant for a business. It's the applications that make Linux relevant. Red Hat supports a complete Open Source distribution, for a long time now.

Please, get your definitions straight.

You confuse software development companies with support companies, an open source kernel with a complete distribution of software, and you confuse open source with a business model.

BusinessWeek is a meh magazine. I've never read any worthy analysis in it. It's great at forecasting in hindsight.

Well Open Source is either broken, or it's doing fantastic. I guess it depends on who you listen to. Only time will tell I guess.

http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/12/15/story7.html

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/dec/long-live-closed-source-software/

"But the alternative to open development is not necessarily evil. My guess is that a poorly encapsulated, communal gloop of organisms lost out to closely guarded species for the same reason that the Linux community didn’t come up with the iPhone: Encapsulation serves a purpose."