Bill Snyder has written a great series of stories over at Infoworld, covering the 10 most underreported information technology news stories of 2007. Hopefully it is not news to ebizQ readers but Bill, a very savvy experienced journalist, feels one of the ten is the fact that the mainstream media has missed the extent to which open source software (OSS) pureplays "have been steadily integrating parts of the hated commercial software subscription model into their business."

"Say it ain’t so, Linus," he comments.

As our research published over in the Open Source Features section shows in detail, we have a hard time even finding any pure plays outside of the Free Software Foundation (FSF)--which believes software programs are trees or fish or whatever. Red Hat's on the cusp and it remains to be seen which way it breaks in 2008. My bet is that under new day-to-day leadership, Red Hat breaks more commerical than free.

That is the debate of course: free vs. commercial, not OSS vs. commercial. As our ebizQ research also shows, OSS is not a business model but a set of terms and conditions and a development culture. Playing Bill's "underreported" game but just concentrating on OSS, here's my list for 2007:

-- IBM probably surpassed Red Hat as the largest provider of software under OSS terms and conditions as measured by revenue
-- Red Hat's intention to gain 50% worldwide server market share by 2015
-- The lack of acceptance of version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPL) by the Red Hats and MySQLs of the world (this is the key to Bill Snyder's story of course)
-- Red Hat taking on TIBCO and IBM in middleware with its MRG technology
-- Microsoft will probably have as many Linux boxes in its big "online" server farms as Longhorn systems; the new Microsoft question (also under new management) will be "what will it take to beat Google and IBM, not Linux"

As for Linus, Bill, of course he works for IBM, HP and Intel.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Attention all open source software (OSS) ERP organizations: I am researching the next in a series of OSS-related application research articles for ebizQ.

Previous OSS application research has covered enterprise content management and business intelligence software.

My next application article, scheduled for February 2008 release, will focus on OSS ERP software and services, including ERP software as a service (SaaS) offerings based on OSS. The growth of OSS applications to the overall OSS movement is important because applications traditionally account for 60%-70% of software spend but just the opposite seems to be happening with OSS. According to IDC data released in May and discussed here, infratructure rather than applications seems to be dominating when it comes to OSS. But I think that is simply a matter of timing and tooling; the infrastructure has to be in place before the applications can follow. On the other hand, there is no one to one relationship between having OSS infrastructure and OSS applications so perhaps OSS will play out different than software markets have in the past. We are trying to determine that in this research series.

Or you might not even care and simply want to make sure you are investigating good solid OSS ERP packages for your company. In that case, the trends of ERP going back to the 1960s seem to be holding: it matters what industry you're in and how large or small your company is. Depending on answers to those questions, users are finding out that not all ERP software offers much RP.

And particular to OSS, can the enterprise truly “afford” to join the OSS ERP movement, giving back as much as it gets?

If your company or OSS community develops ERP software and would like to formally participate in my data collection, please download and complete the 1-page survey form (see "Download File" below) and return to dennis@ebizq.net by Friday January 18, 2008

Download file

Note that as the survey indicates, ERP software products will be covered in the report if they use OSS (e.g., bundle in an OSS application server product such as Geronimo) even if they are not “sold” as OSS themselves and no matter how they are monetized.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A drumbeat of propaganda in the blogosphere says OSS pure plays are the place to be for technology users and investors. ebizQ research, the first of which appears on this site today, finds the trends run against that propaganda on the blogosphere.

The first research piece looks back at 2007. It finds that the most important trends in 2007 were that the OSS culture became more independent, the OSS development model sorted itself into three tracks (OSS-related software with restricted Ts&Cs, OSI-licensed software, and truly free as in air FSF-licensed software), and that the OSS services business grew deeper and wider. Oh, it also says there is no such think as an OSS market but you'll have to read the article to get the point.

Subsequent articles appearing in January will look at 2008 and beyond, and specifically list ebizQ's estimate of the leading OSS market players. Despite my opinion that there is no OSS market, no self-respecting year-end journalism can be released without a list.

The forthcoming research finds that one OSS pure play such as Red Hat may break out of its roots and take a place alongside the existing major software suppliers as a software market leader. But we found that it is the existing suppliers (that is, Adobe, BMC, Google, IBM, Oracle, SAP, TIBCO, and so forth) that will dominate OSS in 2008 and beyond. These suppliers will
• Provide the interoperability that OSA research says users are demanding
• Progressively move up the stack to provide applications functionality to match the operating infrastructure users have become accustomed to with GNU/Linux and saw in the midstack in 2007
• Monetize their OSS related offerings in such a way as to dominate the software market the way they always have.

IBM may in fact already realize more OSS-related revenue than Red Hat. And Microsoft will even join the movement. This is not a bad development for users because it means OSS performs functions users need, it works well, and it does not break down any more often than closed-source code. Our major finding is that that is all users really care about.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my IT investment research work (see link to the right), I am a big fan of the open source software (OSS) development model because it has restructured and lowered R&D expense for most of the leading software suppliers I cover, while making their customers happier. I enjoy opining about the OSS community and culture here on ebizQ because it reminds me of user groups like DECUS, NADGUG and others that were so important during the minicomputer era when the minicomputer companies basically supplied only what is called today “bare metal” (presumably because nothing is made out of “iron” anymore). And I am a fan of Red Hat because I like the underdog; it is the only one of a few small software suppliers we follow at Research 2.0.

That being said, Red Hat chairman Matthew Szulik on December 20 (in what might be his swansong as Red Hat CEO at a quarterly conference call because Red Hat also elected a new CEO on December 20) misrepresents the benefits of OSS. In doing so, I fear he threatens the leading software suppliers’ new cost structure, many OSS communities’ expectations, and maybe even the chance that Red Hat can become one of those leading software suppliers some day. He announced that Red Hat continued to grow at about a 30% trailing-12-month rate, meaning about twice as fast as software market leaders Microsoft and Oracle. He credits the company’s “strong financial performance” to the fact that Red Hat’s “business model actually requires us to deliver value in order for the company to be successful.”

I believe that is true. I just don’t believe the Red Hat's success has anything fundamentally to do with OSS. Szulik says “Open Source opens the opportunity to reduce the cost and delays associated with (big software projects because it involves) developing software in small, easily digestible increment...” That’s RAD 101 and not at all unique to OSS.

He goes onto say, “In Open Source software, innovation happens every day to produce a more highly reliable and higher quality product.” Our research produces no direct evidence that OSS-licensed code is more reliable than closed-source code. I believe that because OSS-licensed code is basically “newer” in design philosophy, that it is better built. But I can’t demonstrate that statistically. And because most OSS is also literally new I do not believe that it has been “exercised” enough yet to discover all the inevitable bugs. Software development using a RAD philosophy is more than ever a cottage industry, totally dependent on the old ladies at the spinning wheels not missing a beat or a thread.

Szulik says Red Hat “pioneered the subscription model… (which) has been a highly disruptive approach, not just in the delivery of the product and pricing, but in the fundamental approach of how the supply chain of computing software has been built.” There is no one-to-one relationship between OSS and the subscription business model. In fact it is just a variation of the systems rental and service bureau models that predated the minicomputer/independent-software-vendor (ISV) era, and the perpetual-license-plus-subscription-maintenance-fee model associated with most ISVs products today. Red Hat just executes it well.

Szulik talks about the joint collaboration with a customer that led to the MRG technology recently released to beta as an example of OSS. Ah, how about GE/BOA/MICR—1956? Or IBM, its Midwest utility customers and a Type II (sort of OSS but who would want the source) program called CICS—1968? And on and on.

So hats off to Red Hat for another good quarter and best wishes to Mr. Szulik in this new role as Chairman only. But let’s not credit OSS. And let’s not blame OSS when the inevitable bad quarter arrives for Red Hat, which the investment community might define as when Red Hat is growing only as fast as Microsoft and Oracle. OSS is basically about terms and conditions from a business perspective and a culture from a personal perspective. It’s not about higher customer loyalty than IBM or Oracle, more frequent conversions from free sample to paying customer, or better growth rates and profits.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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In a recent blog post here on ebizQ, I talked about how OpenLogic is among those driving the inevitable consolidation of the open source software (OSS) development model but with a strategy that preserves the OSS culture. As a researcher in OSS, part of that cultural change means making the research more open source, which is why you find many things here on ebizQ at no cost (but still copyright protected of course) that major research firms I have worked for charge large fees for.

Now OpenLogic has taken the lead in an idea that furthers such open-source research into OSS, facilitating an OSS census. The first phase of the program involves the release of OpenLogic's OSS Discovery software under an OSS license, as well as an invitation for open source developers, software vendors and large ISVs to join The Open Source Census project. The overarching goal of The Open Source Census is to paint an accurate portrait of OSS usage in the enterprise.

So for example, we will be able to find out with more statistical accuracy the answers to questions such as:

-- How prevalent is the LAMP stack vs. the WAMP stack (and WAOP and LAOP stacks for that matter?)?

-- How much OSS is truly free and how much is just open?

-- How quickly are open source ESB's permeating enterprises?

-- And many similar questions that users, managers, developers and investors care about and that I have written about in the Features section that accompanies this blog

Today in this podcast of about 5 minutes in length we have Kim Weins, Marketing VP at OpenLogic, to tell us more about what I hope becomes known as the OpenLogic OSS Census.

Posted by dennisb in Podcast | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) last week broadened widely the role it wishes to play in supporting the open source software (OSS) developer and user communities. These changes will also increase the OSI role in speaking for the OSS movement in general.

On its web site, the OSI board said that as part of its ongoing effort to improve transparency and encourage participation, it will concentrate on three major mailing lists in 2008: one for license review, one for license discussions and one for general OSS issues. This is somewhat in reaction to the August-October 2007 review process for the Microsoft public licenses, which branched off into much more substantive philosophical discussion than whether the Microsoft licenses simply met the letter of the OSI definition of OSS. Another driver of the OSI decision is what some OSI board members and discussion participants think of as a dangerous proliferation of OSS license types.

The three discussion groups are as follows:

1. License-Review: This new, tightly-focused list is specifically for evaluating licenses with respect to both whether they conform to the OSD and how they impact proliferation (relative to the pre-defined categories), in accordance with the revised License Approval Process. It will be managed by Russ Nelson, Chair of the Licensing Committee.
2. License-Discuss. With the creation of license-review, this list is being repurposed as a general forum to deepen the community's understanding of licensing issues. As such, it will be responsible for the new Open Source License FAQ, which is designed to capture the community's "best understanding" of common issues. The list will be moderated (as needed) by Ernest Prabhakar, OSI Board Observer.
3. Issues. In addition, the OSI is creating a brand new list for the community to provide feedback and input on the OSI's operations as a whole. In particular, this list is a place where anyone can request (and volunteer for!) activities they feel the OSI should pursue. As such, the Issues List acts as the "parent list" for Membership, the Open Standards Requirement, Women in Open Source, and other initiatives that are currently on hold pending new leadership and clarified charters. This list will be managed by Michael Tiemann, OSI Board President.

In keeping with OSI's belief in the power of open communities, the board said all of these lists are open to the public. However, the contents of the License Discus FAQ will be moderated and only a tight group of editors will actually post to the License-Review community.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), which has contributed an ebizQ feature article here, sponsored a series of focus groups during 2007 with some interesting results. The focus groups, which the OSA called forums probably because they did not meet market-research criteria needed to provide statistically significant results, provided an opportunity for OSA customers in five different cities in North America and Europe to share best practices with others and for the OSA to learn what the most important issues are among open source software (OSS) customers going into 2008. More than 100 customers, including integrators and vendor partners, attended. All content has been published to the OSA community site and can he found here.

The findings, consistent with my own research, are overwhelmingly pro open-choice.

The OSA says it heard that commercial OSS solutions are being broadly adopted but that challenges—interoperability stands out as a key issue—remain. Consequently, the OSA plans to focus its efforts in 2008 on addressing the interoperability issues deemed most important by the forum attendees. Read that as “we’ve got to get along with Microsoft.” Over 50% said they needed to make an OSS solution run on Windows or integrate with other Microsoft products such as the Internet Information Services (IIS) web server, ActiveDirectory or Sharepoint.

In addition, consistent with our research, few customers value OSS because they can change the code to meet their requirements. Most instead preferred the code to meet their requirements as-is, so they could minimize support and development costs. We still believe the OSS terms and conditions related to the ability to change code are important to users if a community dissolves or a commercial sponsor stops providing support.

The OSA asked customers how important OSS definitions and Open Source Initiative (OSI)-compliant licenses were. Other than the advantage noted above, most said other elements of the definition were not part of their buying criteria. Vendors and integrators, however, were more likely to say this was important because of redistribution obligations.

Additionally, larger enterprises also consistently raised business process orchestration (BPO) and production management and monitoring as important issues. I am researching OSS BPO in December 2007 and will publish a synopsis of my research here in January 2008. Per our upcoming 2007 look-back/2008 look-ahead research, large enterprises recognize more value in OSS because they have more IT resources to manage support, maintenance and integration issues themselves. Many IT directors in larger enterprises simply say “go do it.” The path into the small and medium businesses, according to OSA, depends on ensuring that OSS products are already maintainable and interoperable out of the box.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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In a recent podcast, I talk about some of the similarities of the informtation technology industry and the manufacturing industry with Michael Tiemann, president of the Open Source Inititiave (OSI). In particular, the idea was how the tool and die industry is a leading indicator of the health of the overall discrete manufacturing sector.

In this podcast, we take that thought to the next logical step. Let's talk to the guys that make the tools for open source software. So in the above downloadable file, we spend 5 minutes with Mike Milinkovich, representing the leading developer of OSS tools, the Eclipse Foundation. We wanted Mike's vision for the Foundation for 2008 and beyond.

The Eclipse Platform was released by IBM into Open Source in 2001. By the end of 2003, that group had grown to over 80 members and in February 2004 the group organized into a not-for-profit corporation. All technology and source code provided to and developed by this community is made available royalty-free via the Eclipse Public License. Major developer and user companies have all joined.

Mike....

Posted by dennisb in Podcast | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve posted here and here about the difference between the terms “free software” as defined by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and “open source software” (OSS) as the term is used generically and defined by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). A recent Computerworld interview of law professor Eben Moglen (founder, president and executive director of the Software Freedom Law Center and former director of the FSF) lays it out from the FSF point of view better than I can. And I find it chilling. Despite signs that court action will actually finally be taken by his center for the first time after a decade of talking the talk about the FSF’s GNU General Public License (GPL), Moglen’s and the FSF’s position is really philosophical and not law-based.

Moglen says that in 1980 he began believing “that the linguistic interaction between human beings and computers afford human beings better ways of knowing and solving problems.” He continues according to Computerworld, “The issues about software were then as they are now, merely one layer in a layer cake. They are a crucial layer because the network that we live in is made out of software.”

Thankfully my “network” consists of my wife, kids and grandkids, siblings and parents, friends and associates. I agree with software’s problem-solving ability and the layer cake analogy (that is, software is pretty much of no value without some kind of hardware). But I get lost with the FSF worldview that seems to look at software as a living thing, which leads to Moglen's logic that because software is somehow almost alive, it then needs to be free (as in air, or trees, or fish—his analogies not mine). Come on, software programs are just tools, like hammers and screwdrivers, pretty much useless without nails and screws.

Then the interview morphs to FSF Microbashing as such interviews always do. To be fair, the reporter wouldn't have ended the interview until he got some red meat from Moglen. According to Computerworld, Moglen says, “Microsoft still maintains strongly the view that its business model, which depends upon concealing source code from users, is a viable and important and necessary model.” He compares Microsoft to the Soviet Union and its intellectual property relationships (and threatened but never taken legal actions) to intercontinental ballistic missiles. I doubt if Microsoft’s past business plans care one iota whether its source code was concealed; more important, I am pretty certain from doing information technology market research for 20 years that over 99% of Microsoft’s near billion customers didn’t care. But for Moglen to make those two analogies demonstrates what you’re dealing with if you simply want "open choice."

And even if concealing source code was a past Microsoft tactic, the company is changing tactics quickly in reaction to the OSS software development model because the model potentially saves Microsoft (and Oracle and IBM and Google) billions in R&D expense.

Moglen goes on to say, “because of GPL… you can't own it (software now and content next); it's a commons… and you need commons management.” Translation: And we—the true believers—will be the managers of that commune. This is another probably unintended analogy with the Soviet Union. I certainly have no problem with the FSF members thinking this way. That’s its members’ right. I do object to them working to take away my right to open choice, through support of anti-open-choice legislation/regulation and outright politicization (that is, the cronyism, kickbacks and so forth that we witnessed here in Massachusetts a few years ago in the name of OSS).

And even if you don’t care about Moglen's opinion about software as logic, Moglen wants to now move on and "free" software as content. He says, “the Disneys and the other major movie studios... have a great deal of image-making authority in the world -- and a great deal to lose from the obliteration of their distribution mechanisms.”

This is where the FSF philosophy really gets problematic for me because Moglen is saying that not only should the tools be free (and you must use “free tools” to build things, not “closed tools”) but that the resultant things you build with the tools (your house) is free as in air also. In the FSF/Moglen view, your house can be a commune whether you want it to be a commune or not. I have nothing against communes but I don't choose to live as if the house I built is a commune (except for weeknds in the summer when the grandkids show up).

Posted by dennisb in OSS Culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Exchange” was the password for the day December 6, 2007 in the software industry and open source software (OSS) naturally plays a part.

SourceForge, the large OSS publishing house, said it would announce the opening of an exchange it calls an OSS marketplace. And Jitterbit announced an exchange that it calls its Trading Post, aimed more specifically at integration software. Of course Jitterbit hopes that means a lot of integration software optimized for its Jitterbit integration server engine, which is available OSS, but the company is not restricting the Trading Post to its products or by OSS terms and conditions.

Both efforts in a way are taking on Red Hat Exchange (RHX), which offers services and support for about 15 other well known OSS projects. SourceForge and Jitterbit want to go wider to address many smaller projects.

Jitterbit says its Trading Post is like a marketplace for partners, which include many systems integrators (Sis). In integration at least they have found that even if you offer the tool, domain expertise is as important. Its Trading Post is a place to share what it calls Jitterpacks (xml-based “integrations”), Jitter plug-ins (more like conventional adapters and connectors) and other integration techniques and access to integration services (not in the computer science sense of the word). In other words an SI might simply describe/demonstrate its ability to integrate particular types of software but not OSS the code and therefore require the user to subscribe to or contract with the SI. Others might put the code right out there in typical OSS fashion, more like the Sourceforge.net site that sits under the Sourceforge marketplace. Those that take that tack would more than likely be end users but it’s really matter of all comers. A selection of Jitterbit users, customers, and providers have already published their solutions on the marketplace including NASA, The State of Iowa, and Continental Airlines.

The Jitterbit Trading Post in particular is not a competitor with RHX because it is specific to integration. And as described in the RHX link above, Red Hat could stand to take Jitterbits' "all comers" approach and not limit itself to OSS products that run on top of Red Hat Linux. Jitterbit itself was launched in May 2006; we’ll have more say about it in an upcoming review of OSS integration server/business process management/enterprise application integration products as described here.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I caught up with Bryan Che, product manager at Red Hat, to get some background about Red Hat’s Enterprise Messaging/Real-time/Grid (MRG) concept, the distributed computing framework pre-announced by Red Hat December 4, 2007 as a follow-on to November’s Linux Automation announcement.

Linux Automation—based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.1 and its virtualization features—provides for seamless application provisioning/management/monitoring across both physical and virtual servers as well as appliances and “the cloud.” MRG, when available in 2008, will sit on top of Linux Automation and provide similar provisioning/management/monitoring for a grid. The Messaging and Real-time functionality will be supported separately as well (and all of the above is available already in respective OSS communities).

With this announcement, Red Hat is competing as directly as ever against Oracle’s Fusion middleware as well as Oracle’s grid computing support, its RHEL clone, and the recently announced Oracle VM; IBM WebSphere MQSeries, WebSphere Real-time—built on the same Linux extension as Red Hat Real-time—and IBM grid capabilities; as well as (at least for the Messaging component), products from BEA, SoftwareAG, Sun and Tibco. The real-time component appears to be based on development work performed jointly with IBM; the IBM version was made generally available in August 2006.

Of course, I was primarily interested in the OSS aspects of the announcement. To steal a line from Murat Aksu of Zenoss in another context, “This is not your grandfather’s open source software (OSS).” I wondered
(1) why the messaging component community was over at Apache rather than in Red Hat’s own JBoss.org and
(2) where all the other pieces were coming from and how they were being licensed.

The answer to the first question is a matter of both timing and strategy. Some of the work started before Red Hat acquired JBoss but also it makes sense that the messaging component not be as dependent on one middleware stack as most JBoss.org work is, at least implicitly.

As for the answer to the second question, the answer is too long for a blog post. It involves Apache, JBoss, the University of Wisconsin, IBM as noted above, and many more communities and license terms and conditions (Ts&Cs). The complexity of putting the framework together simply from a Ts&Cs perspective demonstrates the advantages that a profit-motivated provider such as Red Hat brings to OSS.

It also demonstrates why OSS is more a development model than a business model as discussed here.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Development | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Attention all open source software (OSS) enterprise application integration (EAI) and business process management (BPM) middleware organizations:

I am researching the next in a series of open-source-software (OSS)-related articles on applications and mid-stack software for ebizQ.

Previous reports have covered ESBs. application and web servers, and business intelligence software.

My next report will focus on OSS integration server and BPM software offerings, including software as a service (SaaS) offerings. Maybe you just call your project/product an integration server; that probably qualifies also since that is how most BPM and EAI middleware is built. If you want to discuss, drop me an email at dennis@ebizq.net.

The ebizQ article on OSS EAI and BPM middleware is tentatively scheduled for release on ebizQ.net in January 2008.

If you would like to formally participate in my data collection, please download and complete the 1-page survey form (see "Download File" below) and return to dennis@ebizq.net by Friday December 14.

Download file

Note that as the survey indicates, EAI and BPM middlewae software products will be covered in the report if they use OSS (e.g., bundle in an OSS application server product such as Geronimo) even if they are not “sold” as OSS themselves and no matter how they are monetized.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATE: Please note the correction below. Magnolia had previously used the LGPL not GPL.

There are a series of blog strings emanating out from and into Alex Fletcher's recent blog entry about the open source software (OSS) business model. I found then interesting because I spoke this week with someone us researchers call "a data point," Boris Kraft, CEO and Partner of Magnolia, based in Basel, Switzerland and NYC, NY. Boris brings some real-life experience to the theories Alex and the others are discussing. Those discussions basically ask what it takes to scale up a business based on OSS and--among other things--whether a service-only OSS business model works. I have covered some of these subjects in my Talking to... series interviews with Apatar, Loopfuse, Talend and others.

Just for background, Magnolia is a commercial open-source enterprise content management (ECM) softwre based on the Java Content Repository standard (JSR-170). I was talking to Boris primarily because of an upcoming article that will appear in the ebizQ Features section concering OSS ECM and Content Management software.

Boris had a compelling reason to support open choice (my mantra if you’re a regular reader), which is why Magnolia features both a GNU General Public License (GPL)-based distribution and a second more conventional license for its enterprise edition (like many other OSS devotees promoting the so-called dual-license model). At its beginnings, Magnolia adopted the services-only approach that Alex and the others talk about as a means to monetize Magnolia's ECM software and he found that the market did not respond. He thinks that it might be because IT folks perceive no cost to mean not as much value. Once Magnolia moved that services value into the conventionally licensed Magnolia enterprise edition along with some functional enhancements (see my upcoming report), business took off.

In deciding to go the dual-license route, Boris discovered some non-intuitive OSS market dynamics. Conventional wisdom says one or a few IT staffers download and adopt some OSS code for a one-off project and then if the project expands, they buy service and support (or an enterprise edition if that is the way the service is sold). Boris finds instead that more often than not top-level IT management is showing confidence in OSS and just saying “let’s just do it; we can service it ourselves,” even in big companies. This is especially true if the OSS project/distribution has been designed to be easy to use. But a result the OSS supplier cannot generate the revenue needed to keep the ball rolling. Our research showed that was probably the case with JBoss prior to the Red Hat acquisition.

Boris had one other interesting point about running an OSS-based business. Magnolia has joined the growing group of OSS communities that bases its OSS project on the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3. Boris had a compelling reason: it makes the community more community like. With GPL v3, any one that makes changes and then distributes those changes, also has to distribute them back to the community. That was a glaring loophole in Lesser GPL (LGPL), which Magnolia had used before, according to Boris.

And to put my two cents worth into the business model discussion, as I've said elsewhere, I don't even think there is an OSS business model. OSS is a development model tied to a wide array of terms and conditions. The business model most associated with OSS has actually been around for over 100 years--do a search on King Gillette. But there other ways of monetizing OSS; for example, see that little company out in SV that monetizes OSS by selling ads on its web site. You'll probably use their OSS-based service when you do the search on King Gillette.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)