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"FOSS Business Model Broken" — Former OSDL CEO
liraz writes "Stuart Cohen, former CEO of Open Source Development Labs, has written an op-ed on BusinessWeek claiming that the traditional open source business model, which relies solely on support and service revenue streams, is failing to meet the expectations of investors. He discusses the 'great paradox' of the FOSS business model, saying: 'For anyone who hasn't been paying attention to the software industry lately, I have some bad news. The open source business model is broken. Open source code is generally great code, not requiring much support. So open source companies that rely on support and service alone are not long for this world.' Cohen goes on to outline the beginnings of a business model that can work for FOSS going forward."
how supposed "experts" can be so dumb.
support != hand holding.
All software has bugs. If your customer finds a bug in the software they can report it upstream and wait around for the bug to get fixed or they can report it to you and pay you to fix it now. That's support. Same goes for features. Maybe they want to use the software for something that upstream thinks is worthless. They could beg upstream to add the feature. Or they could hire developers to add the feature. Or they could outsource that to you. That's support.
How we know is more important than what we know.
No, you can charge as much as you want for distribution, and you only have to give source to those to whom you, personally, have distributed binaries:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
However, as you noted, all it takes is for one customer to put the source up for download, and you're screwed.
There are plenty of ways for programmers to make a living that don't involve boxing and selling a piece of software. Off the top of my head:
I'm sure there are even more that I haven't thought of yet. The market spawns some incredible creativity. The catch however, is that the only programmers who are going to make money are the good ones. The rest are going to have to find another line of work. And I don't see the problem with that at all. And I'll add, as I've mentioned before, I am currently making quite a decent living writing nothing but open source software.
You do it like Apple does, free version is Darwin, commercial version is Mac OSX.
The free version is the core, skeleton, just the basics needed. The Commercial version is the skeleton with meat added on it for bells and whistles and features.
The BSD model works great for Apple.
Red Hat uses the GPL model, the free version is Fedora and the commercial version is Red Hat Enterprise. Novell free version is OpenSuSE, Commercial version is Suse.
There there are custom versions that fit a certain client's need like a glove. One size does not always fit all, and sometimes you have to custom tailor a version for each client.
Also you sell bundles as solutions and the client pays you to set it up for them.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Stuart Cohen today is chief executive officer of the Open Source Development Labs. With more than 22 years of international sales and marketing experience, he is a seasoned technology industry executive and has served in a variety of executive roles. Most recently, Cohen was vice president and corporate officer at RadiSys Corporation where his responsibilities included strategic partnership development with other industry leaders including IBM, HP and Dell. Prior to RadiSys, Stuart was vice president of worldwide marketing and a corporate officer at InFocus Corporation. Stuart spent 17 years with IBM, where he held senior positions in the US sales & marketing division, and the IBM Personal Computer Company and Networking Division, with international business development responsibilities in Europe, Southeast Asia and China. Stuart holds a B.S. in Quantitative Business Analysis from Arizona State University.
LinuxWorld
So... a corporate marketdroid that never invented anything, never built a business, who coattailed himself into executive positions with minor players based on prior employment relationships with major players who has a B.S. in Quantitative Business Analysis. Who, coincidentally is trying to bridge free software and services in a for-pay model that's starving for attention?
I'm gonna go with... um... so they couldn't get an Enderle quote? Was Maureen O'Gara busy that day? How did this guy talk his way into OSDL? It's interesting that their Wikipedia page mentions him not at all.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It wasn't a hard thing for me to adopt OSS. It was a marketing idea that brought Cohen and Frye to this. They are both relentless fools.