One of the most popular themes recently, both in blogs and the press, concerns the different business models adopted by open source vendors.
Matthew Aslett with The 451 Group, has written widely on this subject, particularly through the CAOS blog and with the publication last October of the report Open Source is Not a Business Model: “As the open source development and distribution model has been adopted, either partially or fully, by both startups and established software vendors, some of the assumptions about open source software have taken a back seat to commercial reality. For example, the idea of a community of individuals sharing the development of software projects for the greater good has been superseded by the image of a community of vendor employees sharing the development of software projects to increase code quality and lower production costs.”
In a blog post Matt has also published ideas for classifying open source software methodologies which have been adopted by a number of specialists. We were talking about this earlier this month following a note from Brian Gentile on the “Open Core” business model in which we recognized ourselves.
Carlo Daffara surveyed 218 companies involved in the development or marketing of open source solutions. The survey was conducted within the framework of the FLOSSMetrics project, Free/Libre and Open Source Software under the auspices of the European Commission. “The main objective of FLOSSMETRICS is to construct, publish and analyse a large scale database with information and metrics about libre software development coming from several thousands of software projects, using existing methodologies, and tools already developed. The project will also provide a public platform for validation and industrial exploitation of results.”
This investigation led to the proposal of a new classification taking into account the way that the market for commercial open source solutions has developed. It seems that approximately 25% of the companies in the Open Core category are part of the “dual licensing” model. Of these, the vast majority (60%) are classified as “Product Specialists.”
I invite you to learn more about the work that FLOSSMetrics is doing. This classification effort reflects my own desire for transparency. As opposed to the debates — occasionally quite lively — between the “purists” and the “pragmatists”, I think that this classification is specifically geared to help users find themselves in this constantly changing market. Beyond that it also helps precisely evaluate the open source market as compared to traditional technologies.
Human beings are often reproached for their obsession to classify everything. “Everything must fit in a box!” But for once, I think these attempts are very handy in helping users differentiate among proprietary vendors who are integrating some open source components.
Bertrand
Dear Bertrand, many thanks for your mentions of our work within FLOSSMETRICS. We are also interested in transparency, and being agnostic of what model works better- I personally believe that model adoption changes with time, market conditions and vertical sector, making “clear-cut” decision nearly impossible. I welcome any comment or suggestion on how to make our work useful for companies like yours; after all, helping companies in adopting OSS and OSS business models is among our duties in the project.
I know the debate can appear to turn into an obsession with classification, and seems to just go round and round in circles, but also I believe that it helps to “evaluate the open source market as compared to traditional technologies” as you say. And transparency is the goal - this is not classification for the sake of classification. Hopefully we have taken some steps recently to begin reconciling the different taxonomies in such a way as customers have a framework for assessing open source suppliers. http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2009/03/11/towards-an-agreed-taxonomy-for-open-source-business-strategies/