Investor Dave McClure: ‘Open is for losers’

<i>"I'm very afraid of a world in which we are all Steve Jobs' slaves, Graham said. If anything can save us, it might be Chrome. When Costolo asked whether he would invest in a company building for the iPhone versus Google's Android platform, Graham answered, Of course iPhone. I’m talking about what I hope will set us free, not what will generate opportunities.</i><p>I would see setting us free as <i>the</i> opportunity.

I don't understand why we have to make this a binary, zero-sum game. There is a continuum from completely open to completely closed and most companies operate somewhere in the middle. Open software simply allows us to spend less time reinventing everything from the ground up and more time building something new. Where would Apple be now without the BSD userland, GCC, KHTML etc?<p>The question a smart founder or investor should be asking isn't "Should I build an open or closed system?". It's "What can I build that has the most value?". You'd be crazy not to use as much open software as a foundation as possible and it's good for the health of your business and the industry as a whole to give something back in return.