

Investor Dave McClure: ‘Open is for losers’ - derekc
http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/05/19/dave-mcclure-open-is-for-losers/

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duck
_"I'm very afraid of a world in which we are all Steve Jobs' slaves, Graham
said. If anything can save us, it might be Chrome. When Costolo asked whether
he would invest in a company building for the iPhone versus Google's Android
platform, Graham answered, Of course iPhone. I’m talking about what I hope
will set us free, not what will generate opportunities._

I would see setting us free as _the_ opportunity.

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colinprince
Okay I don't get it. If Graham is afraid of a Steve Jobs world, why did he
answer iPhone to that question?

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btilly
I don't get what it is that you don't get.

The fear he has is that a Steve Jobs world is one in which the overall
ecosystem for startups is significantly weaker than it would otherwise be. And
the reason for that is that Apple will be a gate-keeper, and will be in a
position to just take all of the most profitable ideas. It would be like how
Microsoft dominated the world of desktop applications in the 1990s - not fun.

The question he was answering iPhone to was whether there exist, today, better
business opportunities in the iPhone space or Android space. If you're going
to target one, absolutely there are better profit opportunities in the iPhone
space. It is kind of like how in the 1990s, despite Microsoft being a major
bully in the Windows ecosystem, marketshare meant that there were still better
business opportunities doing desktop applications for Windows than for Linux
or Mac.

The two questions have little to do with each other.

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cageface
I don't understand why we have to make this a binary, zero-sum game. There is
a continuum from completely open to completely closed and most companies
operate somewhere in the middle. Open software simply allows us to spend less
time reinventing everything from the ground up and more time building
something new. Where would Apple be now without the BSD userland, GCC, KHTML
etc?

The question a smart founder or investor should be asking isn't "Should I
build an open or closed system?". It's "What can I build that has the most
value?". You'd be crazy not to use as much open software as a foundation as
possible and it's good for the health of your business and the industry as a
whole to give something back in return.

