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There is very little crossover between my research into publicly traded information technology (IT) companies from an investment perspective (see Research 2.0 button to right) and my analysis of open source software (OSS) culture, development and business issues. The way that the large IT companies co-opted the OSS movement is an example (and that lead to my research with ebizQ). Red Hat is another obvious exception, a large publicly traded enterprise tightly linked to OSS.

But other examples are few and far between. One of the few is SourceFire (NASDAQ: FIRE), which went public in March 2007 and which announced its first-half 2007 results yesterday. SourceFire is a great example of how OSS will remake the software market. It does not position itself to prospects or investors as an OSS company as so many of the inward looking Red Hat wannabees do but positions itself as a network security provider that oh-by-the-way uses OSS as an enabler. That make it more likely to be seen as a competitor to Symantec, McAfee and so forth and not just to OSS-positioned companies such as Untangle, which we talked about last month. (Untangle has an interesting positioning twist of its own versus Sourcefire, however, as explained in the highlighted link.).

I talked with John Newton, a founder of Alfresco (and Documentum) this week and he makes sure to position his new company the same way: function first, enabling technology second or even further down the list (watch this site for the upcoming "Talking to.." article with Alfresco or hit that RSS button up there on the right and see the article as soon as it is posted).

I warned in another post earlier this week how OSS infightling will scare away the investment community the way that the dot.com bubble bursting did seven years ago. In fact, and of course, the investment community is treading very lightly around OSS already, correctly fearing a repeat. Sourcefire wisely avoided any tendency to be labeled that way despite its relationship to the SNORT OSS community and its use of a good part of the LAMP stack. You have to search to find the SNORT link on SourceFire's web site. Sourcefire primarily monetizes its OSS-enabled technology as an appliance.

Oh there is one other small public company in Mountain View that comes to mind that craftily used OSS as an enabler without getting labelled and pigeon-holed as a niche software supplier. If you came across this blog through a search engine, you probably know what company I'm referring to.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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