>Sparrow worked, in part, because it wasn’t open source. No, Firefox isn’t a counterexample - it’s funded by a huge corporation.
Google? Isn't that more of a mutually beneficial business relationship than funding? It was my understanding that Google pays Firefox to be its default search engine, which drives traffic to Google.
Similar business models might be possible for other open source projects. For example, I've contemplated open source forum software which would display ads benefiting the person running the forum 80% of the time, and ads benefiting the author of the software 20% of the time (or whatever).
Google? Isn't that more of a mutually beneficial business relationship than funding? It was my understanding that Google pays Firefox to be its default search engine, which drives traffic to Google.
Similar business models might be possible for other open source projects. For example, I've contemplated open source forum software which would display ads benefiting the person running the forum 80% of the time, and ads benefiting the author of the software 20% of the time (or whatever).