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Re: So, Netscape is dead?

by chunlou (Curate)
on Jul 18, 2003 at 02:42 UTC ( [id://275483]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to So, Netscape is dead?

Many good arguments have been presented. I just would like to add some different perspectives.

Open Source is not unlike natural resources like the forests or the oceans, "free" and taken for granted. But you all have seen what impact the commercial world has on them, once people figured out some operable business models to make money out of them, even at the irreversible expense of those resources.

Could dot-com craze happen to Open Source? I don't know. But the dot-com craze was certainly made up of many unhappy stories. Total stranger investors not caring anything about what a dot-com companies was doing just wanted to invest and make money out of it.

The problem? Those companies became run by traders, rather than managers. They just wanted to buy and sell companies as commodities, not to manage them. Quite a few companies ended up with shallow, shaky business models. Basically, there's a profound gap between the owners and the workers.

Traders don't always make sound business decision. The long term health of a company and its products is not necessarily among their concerns if they can buy and sell something quick and make money, even if it leaves what's left in ruin. It did happen. Probably still will.

After a long detour, I just hope the dot-com craze won't happen to Open Source, at least not the corrupting influence. Everything free and good need to be actively defended, or someone will take advantage of it for his own good.

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Re: Re: So, Netscape is dead?
by tilly (Archbishop) on Jul 18, 2003 at 03:20 UTC
    Um, the dot-com craze did happen to open source as well.

    Or didn't you see the roller-coaster ride that Red Hat and VA Linux' stock prices took?

    But the odds are that there will not be a stock bubble of that size again in our lifetimes. So I wouldn't worry about seeing that ride happen in the near future in stocks. (Real estate is a different question...)

      Speaking of VA Linux's IPO, this is an interesting read now that we know what happened (hope he had some money by the end :).

      But the odds are that there will not be a stock bubble of that size again in our lifetimes.

      Are you going to live 35-40 years more? I'm guessing most around here will, so I wouldn't doubt we'd see it again, it is a cycle that keeps repeating itself.

        Oh, ESR got some money. Just nowhere near enough for the alternative minimum tax. :-)

        As for my claim about the size of the stock bubble, we undoubtably will live to see other stock bubbles. But the one just past is clearly not comparable with any bubble since the Roaring 20's. And even that comparison is unfair - the 1920's boom probably was smaller! So I stand by what I said, I have no expectation that I will live to see another stock market.

        (A note on my life expectancy. I would like to live 40 years more, but have no confidence. If I do so then I will live to be older than my uncle Bill is now - and he is the longest living male relative that I have had since the Civil War. OTOH my health risk is heart attack and stroke, which is controllable, so I have a chance at least at making my mid-70's...)

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