[Foundation-l] in defence of Google

[George Herbert]

On 1/21/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> With the feeling for a need of an alternate search engine, you will have
> obviously considered a business model for this project, even "not for
> profits" need business plans. This business plan will make plain why it
> is a good thing to do but most of all how it will be possible to make it
> a sustainable project. Sustainable as in being both able to scale and to
> be there next year as well.

As the recent Wikipedia fundraising drive demonstrates, it's one thing
to start a collaboration project, but it's entirely another to keep up
with your own wild success if you do take off.

If you introduce the world's best, brand new search engine open source
tech project tomorrow, that's more useful and open than Google, you're
going to have a hard time managing the growth, by any standards,
commercial or open source...

To amplfy Gerard's comment, the "vision" has to include a business
plan and some operational clue.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com