[p2p-research] How P2P / Open Source Ought to Work

[Ryan Lanham]

One of my favorite success stories is the Open Geo Suite:
http://opengeo.org/

TOPP is a New York-based firm focused on open ventures.  The Geo Suite was
funded to make open source open information tools available to map and
geographic data people.

Thus, private funds built a non-profit (501-C-3).  That non-profit builds
jobs and worthwhile products that are open and free.  Firms that use these
tools (e.g. Google or many governments) hire professionals from this firm
and others to morph, adapt, extend the open tools.

It isn't Camelot, but a lot of people make good livings off of completely
open freeware that anyone can access, use, etc.  It isn't pure P2P but it
can enable P2P applications.

Using local community foundations or chambers of commerce, etc., such
programs should be relatively easy to flesh out.  Not sure why we don't have
more of these Apache Software Foundation model corps.

Ryan Lanham
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