> > The commonly understood FOSS business model : You write software and > release under FOSS licence. Charge customers for distribution costs, > Consulting, Training and Support. > > FOSS Yellow Pages service you are building simply uses a commercial > business model where you create a network of buyers and sellers. Then > you try to monetise the traffic (eyeballs). You are using FOSS users / > companies as the traffic. >
I did not know there was FOSS vs Commercial. FOSS doesn't mean programming or working for free of cost. I also agree with that. In Yellow Pages, the nature of 'product' is different from packaged software. It is a service. There is no code base -- its database and content. Mukware already releases all its content under CCL3.0 unported -- so we are releasing our content (product) under the Free Software philosophy. In FOSS Yellow Pages, the community/readers will have *unrestricted* access to the database, that is our promise. By unrestricted I mean -- you won't have to pay or sign-up or register to access the database. However, companies who do business and make profit may not mind to get listed. Even if you are running a company you would rather choose a paid service than a free one. Skepticism is good but don't say we are 'using' FOSS users. There is no usage here as such. I hope I have made my point clear. By the way Katonda.com has no FOSS angle still we do a lot of advocacy stories and release all our content under CCL. Swapnil _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
