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Seven Open Source Business Strategies
Openstandards.net writes "One of /. posters' favorite discussions is the value of open source as a business model. OSDN has an article on IT Manager's Journal that highlights seven business strategies for open source. " Slashdot and ITMJ are both owned by OSDN.
I found this article quite insightfull. One of the paradigms of modern business is the outsourcing model, and that is due to a recurrent need to reduce overhead in any kind of business (overhead always looks like bad news for stock investors). And software aquisition and maintenance IS a major overhead in any IT oriented enterprise.
The obvious solution is to get the resources as they are needed. And that business frame fits perfectly on the OS business model. That, and not Open Source fundamentalism, is what may make or mars OS.
Therefore OS must continue to focus on enhanced flexibility and customization, not offered by other non-OS platforms, as a way to thrive. Then, let us consultants do the rest of the dirty work :)
Forget the money, send the patches you had to write.
Open source shouldn't have to count on people "playing nice" - it's about enlightened self interest: sharing your patches decreases your costs in the long run, because you can apply other people's patches more easily.
Convincing MBA weilding bosses of this is more than half the fight.
#!/usr/bin/english
Unless you count WalMart/Lindows as embedded, the only business model that seems remotely geared toward consumer desktop is a subscription model. I can see how Linux provides multiple sound business models for b2b, but wonder if any company can make money off consumer desktop linux.
Any thoughts?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I'm newly MBA-weilding, and hopefully former-sysadmin.
The good news is that business people ARE starting to hear about F/L/OSS. Within my own classes, I tried to inject presentations about it whenever possible. In my last class, a business strategy class, my prof allowed me to deviate from the normal "find a way to help a business" project to doing one on "what every manager needs to know about OSS".
It will take some time, but the word is getting out!
It's not the MBA that makes people stupid. Stupid people have amazing ways of getting all kinds of degrees and certifications!
I think the problem is that its so difficult for 'accountants' and 'evaluators' to really put a value on any open source which a company may end up contributing to with
With software, there are a number of different approaches for 'valuating' a company codebase and sticking that figure in a spreadsheet along with all the company's other assets, such as account balances, etc.
With OSS though, how does that valuation occur? Its a public trust sort of scenario - as if the tax which all employees paid the government each year was 'also valuable' to the company, whose cash it was originally before payroll was paid.
OSS 'contributions' are a strange beast to an accountant, and unfortunately, many companies these days rely on valuations and assessments from 'traditional bankers' for things (such as getting loans to cover payroll, or new inventory for sales seasons, etc).
I know that EFF donations and all those 'tax-free writeoffs' are also valuable too, but these don't get thought of as 'investment return', generally. So if you put your main codebase development out into OSS, and your accountant wants to write all your primary code off as 'donations and contributions, non-return expected', then it gets a bit weird...
I think groklaw really ought to spend some time on this sort of thing; the more boring side of supporting linux/OSS on the legal fronts may well lead to a solution to this accounting dilemna, and that would surely be nice for a lot of companies that want to get into OSS
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Or you do something that makes sense, and proven to work.
Do not release engine code, since that will remove the option of licensing it to other companies.
Release game specific code, so that your paying customers can modify game play elements as they see fit, and by doing so increase the number of people who will by your game (continues flow of customers by continuously updated content, with minimal time and money investment from the game developer).
All this has proven to work, and there's absolutely no sense (from the pov of the game developer) to release the engine code for free.
Of course, once the game has stopped selling you can always release the engine code, like Id did/does with its games.
The Mozilla project continued to deliver buggy, late releases
That can be said of most successful software projects. Why is the article picking on Mozilla especially? Because a superficial look at their Bugzilla database makes it seem like Mozilla has lots of problems? IE is worse.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I don't see what is foolish per se about allowing them to use their license on my code, considering the huge benefit I got from getting MySQL for free (except if you think copyleft is the only way, of course)
And to all the sibling posts, as someone who actually contributed to MySQL (although nothing
worth mentioning), let me clarify a bit:
(And if you are wondering why I am posting anonymously: I just like my privacy.)