[…] As far as Mr. Nguyen is concerned, pursuing his labor of love is enough reward in and of itself.

After the Mac Freeware list, I found a comprehensive list of free software. It is amazing the amount of geek-time dedicated by programmers to code for free and for the greater good of humanity. There are hundreds of programs. The NY Times runs an article, Death by Smiley Face: When Rivals Disdain Profit quoted above, discussing these not-for-profit ventures and the impact they have on established for-profit business.

A few of these initiatives have a huge impact, leaving no place for other for-profit operations. Others leave enough room for improvement (in terms of usability, integration with other software, scalability,…) for a commercial application to be developed, and then again, the the profit is in the right spotting of the opportunity and in the selling of the application. Pure marketing! Not computer skills.

My guess is that most of these initiatives have little or no impact on the commercial application. A few exceptions:

• The Firefox browser is, arguably, one of the most successful and it has about 10% market share, but microsoft is not sitting and watching.
• On the server side LAMP platforms are widespread, as well.
• And Apache alone has a 70% share of web servers (netcraft) and running strong.

The MBAer moral of the story: Before jumping on a high-tech venture, check the neighborhood, and think twice about moving if you see some smart smiley loving faces coding for free.