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gnat (29)

gnat
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Journal of gnat (29)

Monday October 07, 2002
04:28 PM

Brought to you by the letters 'l' and 's', and the number 0

[ #8229 ]
Sesame Street turns to open source and free software. Because it's cheap. I'm all for cheap, but I'm starting to develop a sensitivity for shareware and small commercial developers who are finding it hard to "compete" with open source.

The big ways I see small developers able to compete with open source are:

  • usability and user friendliness
  • single source support
  • integration

Is that really all the competitive landscape is reduced to, though?

--Nat


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  • First off, you can be begware and Open Source. My guess is that begware has similar profitability characteristics to shareware as long as the shareware isn't actually crippleware and stops working after some period of time.

    Second, from what I can tell, the small software developers, for the most part, aren't competing in the same spaces as Open Source.

    Let's take the example of this Sesame Street story. Any small software/shareware guys doing databases like PostgreSQL? Anybody doing Web Programming env

  • According to the article Seasame Street was using StoryServer and Oracle on Sun hardware. Where is the small developer in that picture?

    My idea of a small developer is a shop that specializes in using open source tools to solve problems using custom software. Maybe that's just because I cut my teeth working for one [vm.com] but I can't see much else succeeding on a small scale.

    -sam

  • Now Sesame Street uses an open source platform for its web server? That's hardly news. The success story for the team who did it is nice, but it does not signal a major shift within CDW. They've been using open source stuff for quite a while the same way that almost every other big company in New York uses open source somehow---they just do not talk about it.

    Their web site is only a small part of their company, though. I would be more impressed if they produce an entire hour of television with open sou
  • It really isn't that surprising or even all that interesting that Sesame Street is using Open Source to power their website. As brian pointed out, it's a common, easy win. Plus, the CMS space has all of the characteristics of a platform market even though most commercial CMS's are designed, marketed and installed as applications.

    I'm all for cheap, but I'm starting to develop a sensitivity for shareware and small commercial developers who are finding it hard to "compete" with open source.

    I don't see

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