A marketing angle

[Stefan Schmidt]

Hello.

On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 21:34, Ben F-W wrote:
> Stefan Schmidt wrote:
> >  
> >Porting the apps from OpenMoko over to Qtopia is a real pita. No new
> >kernel features, X instead of framebuffer, gtk instead of qt. Writing
> >it from scratch seems easier for me.
> >  
> Ah, now I understand what you mean!

Nice. (/me makes another dash on his
explain-people-the-open-source-way-of-thinking list). ;)

> What I was essentially getting at here is what's called 'sustained 
> competitive differentiation' in marketing-speak. That means that to 
> break into this market, FIC would have to have a long-term advantage 
> over rivals that they were unable to copy - or which, by the time 
> they've copied it, is out of date. What concerned me about the GPL'd 
> 'killer app' is that there was nothing to stop a rival company just 
> taking the program and putting it onto their own handset - which 
> wouldn't contravene the GPL as I understand it. Competitive 
> differentiation lost.

That's the way most business people thinking. After a better
understanding of the facts companies are still able to have a good
business with open source software on their devices.

> This does rest on the assumption that the rival's system isn't based on 
> X and GTK and so on, which would mean there could still be a problem.

At this point the company would think twice why they not just use
OpenMoko. And FIC is interested in other companies using OpenMoko.

regards
Stefan Schmidt
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