Strategy and Open Source Business Models (and not)
Are you into the IT business?So, you might already know that since into this world resources usually cost, it looks like software development in Open Source (like any other activity) needs a working business model, which says how you generate revenue for sustaining the activity. Obvious as 1+1.
It looks to me that a lot of what is around Open Source Software (OSS) is not real-world business models, they are "just" marketing strategies.
In reality, all is mixed up, and there are exceptions, but let me explain what I mean.
An OSS project can also get resources either from users who are strongly interested in such software, or by hobbists who like fiddling with technology, etc.
So, looks like we can talk of business model for each project, which works (in many cases it works very well). But it is also true that many projects are fed by a Business Strategy, rather than a pure interest into the resulted products.
E.g. IBM smartly gives Eclipse, then will sell Rational products to the educated customers (plus will get an ide for their app.server). Another case: some (many?) want Mozilla Firefox Web browser to be an excellent product (and actually it is) and give it for free, and this stop Microsoft I.Exporer to eat the whole pie and throw standard spec out of the window.
What is that for? Not strategy per-se, of course, but with the unique ultimate goal of keeping healthy real business models for other products.
When you want to persue a strategy, and have enough money, you can make whatever projct work. Just your strategy feeds the business model.
The question is: excluding these strategy-fed cases, what are the real business models that can work for Open Source?
Oh, yes. I think there are.
Furthermore, I think we are experiencing e tremendously interesting innovation in the product/services market models.
Stop now. Too many different aspects to discuss about this, for a single post. Ad too many questions would arise.
It would be very nice to create a collection of collections of business models for OSS, then discuss in which scenarios those can be successful.
1 Comments:
Nice article, thanks
Making revenues from free & open source software is one of the most frequently asked questions these days. While there have been a few successful examples of companies (like MySQL, Red Hat etc) which are making money, I’d surmise that these are still very early days for open source revenue & profit models.
While open source as an operational paradigm certainly has been having exceptional success against proprietary and closed-software models in the recent past, in my opinion, a lot more thought need to be given and experimentations done before the emergence of viable revenue models for the free & open source models that can successfully compete with the current proprietary software revenue model. Some specifics of the business models are emerging fast, but it will take a few years for the market to test each of these out and hopefully, the fittest will survive.
A site that focuses exclusively on revenue models from open source is Follars.com – Free, Open-source Dollars!
Ec @ IT, Software Database @ eIT.in
Post a Comment
<< Home