[Info-vax] Ask the Wizard archives?

[Jim Causey]

On Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 8:02:51 AM UTC-7, Tim Sneddon wrote:

> However, what I get from your statement above
> is that a company should give their information away for free until they
> are big enough to make their customers pay for it?  That seems like a
> bit of a ridiculous model.

What I meant, and probably expressed poorly, was that I think *all* tech companies are better served by making documentation available widely and freely, but that I get why they don't. Even though I think Red Hat is making a mistake doing so, there are some advantages in the GNU/Linux ecosystem that make it less risky for them.  Most of the documentation and source access in that ecosystem is not provided by Red Hat, nor is it provided by entities that will start charging for it in the future.

> for free, they are certainly not suddenly going to become a paying
> customer.

No one "suddenly" becomes a paying customer.  But the vast amount of free documentation on the dominant developer and IT platforms of the eta are not doing anything to hurt their adoption, or the revenue they generate.  

That's not to say that open model can work for a small, niche company trying to build a business and make revenue from legacy, niche customers who continue to invest in OpenVMS.  I just strongly believe this "closed docs" story is a mistake.  

Time will tell, however.