He's grown Vinabook to 200, 000 customers in five years, and following the lead of Dangdang, aims to become his market's leading online retailer, selling not just books but also software, movies, music and calendars.

FORBES: Commentary

The original purpose was to develop management software, but Berezovsky moved quickly into selling cars.

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Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) is the software giant, but has had little success selling hardware.

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But few software companies were writing applications for NeXT, and NeXT computers were selling poorly.

FORBES: Personal Thoughts About Steve Jobs

But bits are bits, and selling music and movies is no harder than selling software.

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But again, unless you are selling apps through an app store, being a software company now may also means being a data center provider.

FORBES: If You Ran a Software Company, Would You Go All-Cloud?

But nine years later it acquired database management software from Lockheed Martin and started selling the technology under license to small banks, to help them manage their customer accounts.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Sendmail is selling a commercial version of the software with a special graphical interface, but it is also supporting the development of a free version of the program.

ECONOMIST: Open-source software

For now, it appears that the API Copyright Troll concept is limited to the particular case of Java, software created corporate owners (Sun) who chose to make it free and open source, but was then purchased by a company (Oracle) that has had enormous success in selling licenses and services for the software it developed.

FORBES: Oracle Vs. Google And A New Kind of Patent Troll