Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC trial of embedded Flash video

[Alex Hudson]

On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 13:47 +0100, Ian Lynch wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 13:25 +0100, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > On 21/05/07, Ian Lynch <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > But how do the VCs get their money back?
> > 
> > High end development services, mainly porting, is big business.
> > 
> > "Selling ... "porting Gnash to your device"."
> > - http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash/2007-03/msg00000.html
> 
> 
> But if anyone can do it, where is their competitive advantage to come
> from? I can see that you can set up a service company but usually VCs
> don't invest unless there is clear protection from competition at least
> for enough time for them to recoup their investment. I'm not saying its
> not commercially viable, just that it seems like an unusual investment
> for a VC to make.

Historically, VC-funded businesses working on free software haven't been
terribly successful, but I have no idea how successful (or not) they are
compared to VC-funded businesses in general.

In terms of competition, though, in the software business such things
are sometimes naturally limited by time - VCs are usually after an exit
in the medium-term, and they may be thinking that this kind of business
has a life span of a similar term. After all, in ten year's time, we'll
likely have something completely different to Flash around.

Cheers,

Alex.