I noticed that latest announcement from Citrix again relies on open source, made me think about this…

The ultimate open source product has to be water. Everyone of us has access to the source and could resell it without permission (turn on the tap). However, some of it is made to sound special through marketing (e.g. Evian)—but it is still essentially the same product—only differentiated by packaging and marketing. You can claim it comes from a special spring, but who are we kidding.

So it is not about the source code, it is how it is packaged, marketed, and sold. There’s no engineering expertise or IP involved to add value—yet $60 Bilion. The free stuff is probably better for you, yet they get people to pay for it. Both Coke, Pepsi, and IBM make a lot from open source these days.

Market size taken from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottled_water

(copyright, Russ Miller, 2010)