Can a FOSS Firm Hit the Billion-Dollar Jackpot?
Can a FOSS company reasonably expect to be worth a billion dollars someday? Should it even try to? No, suggests Slashdot blogger Darren Baker. “Capitalism is failing in North America,” he maintains, but “when it comes to innovation, we’re seeing [FOSS] flourish because nobody has a headlock on an industry sector.”
In any discussion of FOSS’s potential to be profitable, Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) is invariably held up as the poster child for success.
After all, the company is now a US$750 million business, as CEO Jim Whitehurst recently pointed out.
There’s no doubt that’s impressive; at the same time, as noted by Glyn Moody soon afterward, it falls considerably short of the $5 billion target Whitehurst set for the company back in 2008.
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