The assumption that your choice is a binary one is silly. Its never either/or. Its always both.
The first product you build are in a client driven business structure where they are telling you what and how to build it. Then if you do that well enough, you can transform yourself into a product business.
I agree, the best of both worlds is still an option.
Get to a level when you can afford to not be working for a client all the time, and then plan your time to spend, say, a fortnight a month doing client work, then the subsequent fortnight working on your own flux capacitor.
That way, you might even avoid needing to source funding, too.
what I find shady is that its against the law to spoof your competitors domain name, but google will allow you to display ads for when people search for your competitor.
Not exactly the same thing. Spoofing you comp's trade name is pretty much the definition of trademark violation.
It (Google's policy) flops around a bit. It differs between countries and seems to get tweaked or turned over every so often.
I believe in the US bidding restrictions on trademarked terms were recently removed. But you are still restricted in using trademarked terms in ads.
Personally, I agree that restrictions (bidding on trademarked terms) should be removed. I would compare it to handing out flyers on the street outside you competitions' shop. Tasteless maybe, but shouldn't be illegal. Companies don't own the search results, trademark or not any more then they own the street.
I believe you can ask them to remove ads on particular terms, if you hold a trademark on them. I recall reading about a lawsuit that covered that issue several years ago, and I think Google lost. But I could be imagining legal precedents again.
Not necessarily better. I was just being silly, really; haven't used XEmacs myself for years.
XEmacs was a fork off of GNU Emacs. They did some good things with the software, but they were loose in their legal matters, and accordingly the FSF never accepted XEmacs code back into the GNU Emacs mainline.
I currently am working on developing Talent Management software and I always cringe when I hear that one of the key selling points is that it can help increase employee retention rates.
I've always thought that Talent Mgmt software can only take you so far. Any system in place, no matter how good it is, still can never compensate for how a shitty manager interacts with employees.
The first product you build are in a client driven business structure where they are telling you what and how to build it. Then if you do that well enough, you can transform yourself into a product business.