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9 Open Source Companies to Watch
An anonymous reader writes "A look at 9 open source companies to watch, focusing on everything from systems management to portals to apps servers.
" Silly bits like where their names come from to less silly bits like how much VC they got and what they actually do. I haven't heard of many of these, but it's encouraging to see a growing number of businesses being built around Open Source.
IBM. I win.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
not a business model.
...).
The OSS companies with a fighting chance of making it are ones which aggregate (RedHat et al), or ones which have huge numbers of users with some small fraction willing to pay for support (MySQL, SugarCRM,
To paraphrase some sales guys I used to work with, anything you give away for free has no value. In this case value means revenue potential. If the customer is not willing to pay to support the free product, then why are you "selling" the support?
This list is only looking at servers etc and none of these projects/companies would be of any interest in embedded space.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Hardly open source based. Sourceforge is closed source. They won't release modifications they made to mysql. SLASH is open source, that's about it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
intrepid two-year college level training in how to become a successful Project Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is something that, almost by definition, can't be taught, because it involves identifying how to use resources no one had before thought to identify. If you can systematize the method, it's not longer entrepreneurship, but a rote process.
If, on the other hand, they're just using the term "entrepreneur" to mean manager, and they're just going to teach you what you need to know to run a business, they're misusing it.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Browsing the site, it looks like they're doing just what I talked about. Teaching how to be a manager, how to finance something, how to get people to be creative. They're not teaching how to come up with ideas, how to identify undervalued resources, i.e. the stuff that constitutes genuine entrepreneurship.
I know, it sounds like a nitpick, but I don't like when people act like, hey, once you teach this course, you'll be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship comes precisely from not following standard thinking. Maybe I didn't say that right...
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Why did anyone mod this up? At best it is a straw man argument. At worst it is a troll.
Oh wait, let me guess... "support", right? Oh, sure...
Allow me to translate. The previous poster said that the question was answered over and over again. This poster asserts that the previous poster must have meant that answer was "support," even though that was never mentioned anywhere, and then went on to decry (not debunk he simply makes assertions to the contrary, but does not provide any reasons).
Just in case this last poster was just ignorant and not a troll, allow me to make a quick summary of how OSS fits into the business world. Proprietary software is made by a single company and sold to multiple companies for as much as they can get. A cheaper method is for the companies that want to use software to collaborate on the development (OSS) and each only pays for what they need. In addition to that, they all get access to bug fixes and features someone else needed for free. Sometimes this is done by using internal developers who become experts in the software. Sometimes this is done by hiring outside developers to do the work you need. For projects like Apache, there is a core group of developers paid to make general improvements and to make specific customizations or improvements on commission. Developers are paid for support, customization, new features, and sometimes just given a salary to make general improvements and be an internal expert until something specific is required. The actual code is used to provide services or products to other people.
In this model, the developers have less chance of "making it big" but at the same time they can undercut the costs of the competition and provide a better product and have more widespread adoption of their product, which brings a lot of prestige and can lead to other financial opportunities. This model has only been working for a few decades and is in constant use by IBM, Apple, Cisco, and pretty much any major IT company you can think of, and I've, personally, read explanations not very different from this one a dozen times. Please stop asking this.
Are there any other open source based companies besides Red Hat that are actually profitable? I don't mean this to be flamebait, just wondering.
Tons actually. Mostly individuals or small groups of people many working as consultants. You don't have to work for Microsoft, IBM, HP, CA, Oracle to someone that treats you like a meet factory product. It is a growing business, software support and people who are really into the OSS support business, and are not BSers do well. BSers skid fast.
IBM realized this, this is why they have bought companies like ISS and PWC. Service based companies. Simply put, software is cheaper than beer to make open source or not. 10 people get an idea and millions might use and support it. Support is where it is at.
Today most software is sold as a product through inefficient antiquated expensive old style sales channels. Salepeople often go to the CIO/CEO to bypass technical types as they know they are flogging a dead horse and know where the suckers are. Much of the high priced "product" contains fortran, cobol and old junk code inside. Very little of this goes towards engineering and changes, if they occur takes years. They charge fat support fees for software they can't support making suckers of thosue who spend this much. But you have someone to call.
What business wants, and business should pay for is a business solution. This includes running the overly complex products and externalize it as a service. Businesses can't afford experts in every niche product they can buy. Sooner or later, ERP, HRIS, business modeling etc. will all be outsourced to service providers. And the business does not care if it is open source or not. This is also a hint of where OSS thrives.
I back this up with any successful "tech" company today like Google, Postini, Bluecoat and hundreds of others, they provide a service. Would your company pay Dell prices if it were not for the support?
Yeah, thanks for the concern. We're mostly using apache licensed libs, and some public domain stuff. We do not distribute LGPL or GPL licensed libraries presently, but I don't think we'd hesitate to use an LGPL'd library if one were available that we wanted to use. We try to acknowledge any libraries we use by including their notices and license files, etc in the applet jar. If we've messed up, I'm sure someone will come along and let us know so we can fix it. Most of the cherry Java libraries out there are under the Jakarta brand, and those are all apache licensed. Cheers, Dave Woldrich