Is Branding the Future of Open Source?

Khalid writes "People are still looking for good open source business models. Here is a very interesting one I found in the JBoss site. You can become a certified JBoss Group Authorized Consultant in exchange of $5000. Which comprise training and tests, in return, you can use the JBoss brand, which is quite recognized now. While this may not apply to all open source projects, I think this is a best of both worlds deal. The source is open for everybody (JBoss is LGPL). JBoss get a very solid network of consultants which make the JBoss brand even more solid (human networks never die). Users can get support and service and the people at JBoss Group can get some money to pay the bill and keep improving JBoss to make it an even better product, a very virtuous cycle." $5000 is a lot of money, though, and that cost is per-year, not a lifetime membership.

Comments

A bargain!

[Quasar1999]

Pay me $500 a year, and I'll vouch for ya! Sure, I'm a nobody now... but wait till everyone pays me $500... I'll have a great website, and ads during the superbowl... how can you lose?

Paypal account to follow....

Marketing fee, so why don't they call it that?

[ewanrg]

OK, I can understand using certification as a business model and to help develop a stable of knowledgable consultants for projects. But having a per year fee on top of the certification seems like you're paying for them to help market you. So why not call it what it is?

Personally I think having to pay on top of the certification starts to be a bit much. If I pay the 5K and don't get any work out of it, what have they really done for me?

Re:Marketing fee, so why don't they call it that?

[Christopher Thomas]

I can understand using certification as a business model and to help develop a stable of knowledgable consultants for projects. But having a per year fee on top of the certification seems like you're paying for them to help market you.

That depends. You could make a good argument for mandatory recertification to make sure people haven't just forgotten everything they crammed for the exam, and to keep them up to date with improvements. Making certification expire yearly accomplishes this.

Personally I think having to pay on top of the certification starts to be a bit much. If I pay the 5K and don't get any work out of it, what have they really done for me?

They've given you permission to use their label when looking for work, which presumably greatly increases your chances of finding it. If you still can't find any, that doesn't invalidate what they gave you.

I'm not arguing that JBoss certification is *worth* $5K - that's a value decision each buyer has to make for themselves. I'm just pointing out that there is a justification for what they're doing, even if you disagree with the price point.

Works for Coke, Red Hat

[MAXOMENOS]

How do you convince people to buy carbonated sugar water, manufactured at 1.5 cents a can, for sixty cents? Marketing! By the same token, Red Hat has become synonimous with Linux in the non-Linux world. People are willing to pay $80 for software that they can download for the cost of bandwidth, or get from CheapBytes for ten bucks. IT professionals are willing to pay big bucks for Red Hat certifications.

Rock on...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Branding is SO the way to go for open source. Half the reason the powers that be let me run RedHat is because I can get support for it. (Or rather, they can get support for it if I ever leave, get laid off, or get creamed by a bus.)

I can use MySQL because its getting to be a recognized name, and because I can always fall back to the sleepycat license for projects that require the dark side of the force.

Most of your turf wars (Debian v RedHat v Suse, MySQL v PostGres, etc) are all about branding. There are very few functional differences that any corporate user would notice.

My US0.02

This won't always work....

[chinton]

I can see it now -- I spend a bunch of time and money learning the ins and outs of audio encoding, compression and all that good stuff... Then I get my branding: Certified LAME Engineer

Let me get out my cluestick...

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

So little research, so much posting, it's a shame.
This is one of the best things to hit Open Source in a long time. First of all JBoss is an excellent project. These guys are making the proprietary J2EE world nervous. Why am I going to pay for Weblogic, WebSphere or iPlanet when JBoss does the same job?

Secondly, the JBoss development team is dedicated to Open Source Java solutions. Just read the mailing lists, check out Marc Fleury's response to McNealy's criticisms of Open Source J2EE at JBoss.org or check out the interview at theserverside.com.

Marc heads the JBoss Group, the purpose is to allow Open Source developers to do what they love for themselves and make a decent living. They have been doing training at standard corporate rates (~3000USD for a week of training) and consulting for companies that have decided to use JBoss in house. They also sell documentation (a la FSF, but not under and Open Document license). They created the JBoss Group to allow more people to get involved making money doing what they love, Open Source J2EE development.

Due to the success of JBoss, there are a lot of requests coming in from around the world for JBoss support, development and consulting. This is professional work at professional prices. 5000USD is nothing in the professional world. This is more akin to Microsoft Certified Solution Provider programs for independent consultants. The JBoss Group funnels contract work (support, development, training, etc) to it's members while handling the incoming requests (sales qualification, billing, etc). I don't know what kind of payoff this has for the members in terms of revenue, since that information is not publicly available.

I've looked into this program and am excited about it. I've personally been working on a JBoss development contract since the end of January this year, porting a J2EE app from a proprietary J2EE app server to JBoss. I have no affiliation with the JBoss Group, or the project, other than being on the mailing list and hanging out a lot in #jboss on irc.openprojects.net.

Quite frankly I don't know what else to say to the snide comments other than STFU, and get a clue. Especially timothy's snide 'become-a-certified-massage-therapist dept.' tag or the clueless comment at the end. Open Source Java projecs are a shining example of what Open Source can provide. Just look at ArgoUML, XDoclet, UML2EJB, Struts, Ant, Maven, Log4j, Xerces, Xalan, Middlegen and a ton of others. You'll see how this is providing developers with the tools they need to develop enterprise class applications quickly with good design and solid frameworks.

I haven't seen Open Source tools sneaking into more corporate networks and development houses since Samba became popular. Everybody is integrating Open Source java tools, and those vendors that don't are being shunned by the Java development community at large. Check the forums on non-Open Source dev sites or vendor sites for proof.

The JBoss Team and Marc Fleury should be held in the same regard as the Apache Group, Larry Wall and most of the other famous names from the larger projects. I'm saying this out of respect from my experiences professionaly and personally with this project. Of course it seems that Slashdot and many in the Open Source world treat the Open Source Java community as some red-headed step-child. Well, we're putting up, so get your facts straight and take a look. You might like what you see.

Sorry for the spelling errors... I'm in a hurry.