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Great Bridge Out; Caldera in Trouble

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the black-armband dept.

tim_maroney writes: "CNET's news.com gives us a pair of open source disaster movies today. Great Bridge, an open source database maker which refused a bid from Red Hat earlier this year, will lay off 38 of 41 employees and close its doors. Caldera, a seller of Linux and UNIX versions, announced layoffs, plummeting revenues, and a reverse stock split intended to allow it to be relisted. Not a happy day for fans of open source business models."

1 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Open Source Jet Engines by standards · · Score: 5, Informative

    Jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney learned long ago: sell your engines at a loss. The real money is in service.

    At the time, IBM happened to be piloting System R (precursor to DB2) at Pratt & Whitney. And they learned there: Virtually give away the software, and make money on your services. And that's why IBM global services is such a powerful consulting force today. Global Services is the real profit arm of IBM.

    But IBM ain't dumb. Of course, IBM global services prefers IBM products, but they'll support Solaris and Linux and VB apps too.

    And that's the rub. Most Open Source-centric companies don't have deep pockets, but only support a narrow field of Open Source software.

    The fact is guys, it's hard to support 50 new employees on a brand new, growing marketplace. It would be wiser to support existing commercial products while pushing your own [open source] agenda. Heck, that's the successful IBM GS model (sans the Open Source bit).

    Grow up guys, get off your high horse and step into the real world. You can't start a company hoping that all your customers will knock on your door supporting your agenda. But you can can fight for your utopian dream by FIRST supporting your customers, and only SECONDLY by showing your customers why your ideals are best for THEM.