Open source and the mass market

The great discussion we had on Open Office yesterday stimulated another question.

Why isn't open source stronger in the mass market?

There have been free programs that are strong in the mass market. Firefox is one. OpenOffice is another. Linux is a third. But in each case we're mainly talking about altruism motivating the provider, and we're not talking about big market share. The folks who get value out of such products (I am one) don't need support. We muddle through on our own.

I'm talking here about the open source business model -- paid support, updates, etc. -- succeeding in the mass market. I'm talking about really eating Microsoft's lunch.

The benefits of open source flow mainly to business. They are in server software, and in professional applications used by people with paid administrators.

I have some theories about this. Mass market applications require scale, organization, and hierarchies, in order to deliver ongoing support, especially against security threats. The structure of most open source enterprises have yet to scale. The question is, will they ever?

I don't have an answer to that, except to outline a possible business plan. Corporate Office. We take OpenOffice, we hire top committers to it, and we sell support packs to businesses at 10% of what they're paying for the other guys. We donate the templates and other code we create to the community. We make a ton of money.

You game? Serious inquiries only.