Two fascinating factoids from Paul Kedrosky and the Wall Street Journal today, neither of which relates to open source, but both of which gave me pause:
- Paul notes that exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange are making more money from selling data than from revenue from equities trading. Sometimes the business you're in isn't the business you should be in....I'm guessing we'll see more of this in open source, as people learn that there's more money in the data and services around the code than in the code itself...?
- The Journal reports that more than half of today's airline ticket prices are consumed by fuel costs. On some flights - e.g., American's $370 roundtrip between Los Angeles and New York City, $300 of that ticket price is eaten up by fuel. It makes it easier to appreciate just how much pressure the airlines are under.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.