I think this perspective is very interesting. It reminds me of a recent quote from Tim O'Reilly where he talks about similar trends in that, "when something is commoditized, something adjacent becomes valuable."

I'm not sure if this the origin of the interview but here is a link http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/14/oreilly-when-somethi...

indeed. it also echoes Tim's "data is the intel inside" line of thinking from years past.

I disagree. It's neither code nor data, it's how you use the data and / or the code.

interesting. what are the software products that command high licensing fees launched in recent years that you'd point to?

Palantir, some of their Gov contracts are public and they extend to the millions.

very cool. i haven't been tracking Palantir, which is a shame because their approach is orthogonal yet reminiscent of the MDM vendor SRD (since acquired by IBM, and the former employer of Jeff Jonas). and clearly they're successful with their large government contracts.

still, it doesn't appear on the face of it that these contracts will be sufficient to propel it onto equal footing, financially, with the likes of IBM, Oracle, et al.

there is money to be made in software, but i still believe it's unlikely that the big money will come from licensing/sales/support only models.

But is there anyone that has made money directly from the data? It seems like data is only valuable as part of a valuable service, not on its own.

I have made money directly from the data. My startup scratched its own itch, and one of the byproducts was a dataset that we sold directly to another company. The price was in the low 5 figures; we estimate that we have approximately 1k times as much as we sold (initial sale was for proof of concept).

There is huge value in data.

exactly. if you're comfortable talking about it privately, i'd love to hear about it. or even better, if you're ever in a position to blog it, make sure it gets to HN.

either way, congrats. you're well ahead of the curve.

[disclosure: i'm the author]

yes, and i should have included that in the piece as i was asked about it when i presented the material at OSBC.

examples include SpiceWorks (free IT management client, monetizes data / adverstising), to Google (monetizes location data, email, etc), to TomTom (location data).

there were also two separate open source vendors that spoke to me following the presentation that will be launching data oriented initiatives. one within a few weeks.

The money is in the presentation of the data. There is still plenty of money in the software.