>I got that book FREE by Chris Andreson via Kindle amazon eBook when it first released, and it was free ($0.00). I just checked and it's now $9.99 on the Amazon Kindle store. I thought the plan was to make the eBook free, and in some podcast interview I listened to it sounded like that was the plan. It does seem that charging for the eBook version goes against what the book is about. But I guess if the book includes useful content, it has value and may be worth purchasing.

Hey Ken ... I downloaded the Kindle free sample a couple of days ago and read a few pages. It looks interesting, I might buy it ... but I'm going to read a bit more of the sample before I decide.

~~Bonnie



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>>Well said.
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>>It is interesting, though, how there actually ARE some business models built around free OSS. Red Hat took Linux with all of the different more or less disconnected bits and pieces and put together a distribution kit that included stable plumbing between all of those bits, and made a nice business out of it. Lesser known OSS stack Hadoop has the same problem of loosely connected software stack modules, and now a company called Cloudera has made a huge business by simply doing the plumbing between the various modules of the stack and putting them together into a simple installation package, for which they can charge a decent fee. Following a slightly different track, IBM has taken Linux under its wing and thrown in a lot of resources to fortify and stabilize it and make it an integral part of its own (paid) offerings.
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>>For us little guys, though, it does make it tough indeed when our potential customers can grab something for free that we expect to be able to charge for. I do believe, though, that the limits of OSS are fast approaching and the ugly seams of many of these "software quilts" are starting to show and tear. A large enterprise today will not make a reflexive investment in OSS just because it is free -- the lessons of spotty or non-existent support, long product update cycles and general sloppiness that often comes with OSS have finally been learned out there. I'm not putting down OSS as a whole, LAMP stack for example is in wide use out there and for a good reason, but the old saying "you got what you paid for" still holds, for the most part.
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>>I've been reading an interesting book on the topic of "free" by Chris Anderson (who also wrote "The Long Tail" a while back.) The book is called, would you believe it, FREE, and you can buy it for $26.99 (sic!) (I got mine at my local library for free <g>) Apparent hypocrisy notwithstanding, it is an interesting riff on the history of Free, how to monetize Free, and the effects Free is having in the global marketplace today. Highly recommended and quite topical for today -- even if you find yourself disagreeing with some of Chris' theories.
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>>Regards,
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>>Pertti
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