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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

I would be sincerely interested in hearing what the "support model" is for anime/movies/books/etc, because "give the software away for free, charge for support" is really just another way to say "charge Fortune 500 companies metric truckloads for the software, let everyone else freeload in the hopes that they work for a Fortune 500 company and will be an infection vector for you."

Fortune 500 companies do not strike me as having huge anime consumption habits which they wouldn't blink at writing 6 figure yearly support contracts for.

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So would a lot of large content publishers. Apparently advertising revenue isn't satisfying their needs yet.

I believe you are referring to indirect ways of generating revenue, but recently, publishers seem to be heading more towards direct monetization models. Some examples: News Corp. is giving it a shot with The Daily, the television networks are working with Hulu Plus and the music labels have been selling through iTunes for a while.

Hope I've interpreted your comment correctly, but as far as I know, outside of direct advertisements and collecting data on users that can be sold, there is currently no proven/successful model for monetizing free content.

To speculate, some sort of Gillette model could have potential, but I think it's currently difficult to understand a consumers intent and the types of "add-ons" they would be willing to pay for. Perhaps hard copies of the content that contain something original &/or personalized would have value.

Example for anime would be something like give away the anime and sell the merchandising (toys, t-shirts etc).

But that's an entirely different business model: selling add-ons, not support. One, by the way, that does have analogues in open source: WordPress's Akismet is a good example.

(Back in my investment banking days, I worked on a thought piece with all the various business models for open source; if I recall correctly, I think I managed to find six distinct revenue models. Sadly, I don't have the presentation nor can I remember the other four off the top of my head.)

The selling of add-ons would be an equivalent model, of the general model the author is talking about, for anime.

From the article: "This approach can be mimicked by anything that is made of bits not atoms. It can be applied to writing. It can be applied to music. It can be applied to film. It can be applied to photography, anime, cartoons, etc, etc."

The author is talking about the general business model where the thing made of bits is given away (e.g. the anime made from the bits) and the stuff that costs money to create (e.g. the merchandising made from the atoms) is charged for. Obviously, there is no notion of support for anime, music etc that the author mentions.

yup, it was a metaphor. there isn't support in the case of many forms of digital content

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