January 15, 2007 at 15:50Two principles of a successful open source business
Fabrizio Kapobyanko in conversation with a certain Matt Asay, the author of a blog on webloginfoworld.com , shared his ideas about the open source industry and voiced two main principles of a successful open source project. So:
The first principle means that there are many markets for open source, and the developers who are involved in the development of your product will never be a source of profit. They will benefit in another way: expanding the product, providing feedback, testing, fixing bugs and so on - do not expect them to invest in product development.
There are enough companies in the world that make mistakes in this regard. They create business models that urge “free” developers (ie, “community”) to pay. Consequently, different versions of the product appear: one for the community, and the other for professionals and enterprises (Enterprise), and product owners are starting to hope that users from the community will become buyers of a more expensive and better version.
Will not. Do not even try.
And it’s not even the wrong segmentation of the product. You just need to understand and understand well how and why to segment an open source project.
The second principle was expressed by Matt himself on the basis of a conversation with Fabriz. Fabrizio believes that customers want to pay more for the benefits that the open source product provides, and they do not want to buy the product. In practice, it may look like clients believe in the efficiency and sophistication of the code, as well as in a huge number of users without being tied to a specific owner. The buyer simply does not feel like a limited manufacturer.
That is, the buying companies like the benefits that the open source product brings, but their lawyers do not even want to think about the possibility of sharing the code, solving issues with support, etc. Therefore, they want to buy a commercial license for the code of open source products, as if getting rid of the so-called risks of an open source product. They want commercial open source. They want to see some kind of company that is behind the community, but at the same time they want the community itself too.
Let's see what MySQL did. They released an Enterprise version. They didn’t take anything away from the community, but only added what the companies lacked (better support, wider FAQ, etc.). That is, the community has a GPL (version 2), and the company has a commercial license. Everyone won from this!
Your thoughts?
- I [lovermann ] I personally will add that the thoughts expressed above confirm very well that open source products have a future in the commercial sphere; you only need to learn the right interaction. In the end, the benefits come from both the community and the companies that profit from the use of open source software.
- Do not try to use the community (community) to add value to the product.
- Sell the product with open source code to those who do not like or do not believe in open source.
The first principle means that there are many markets for open source, and the developers who are involved in the development of your product will never be a source of profit. They will benefit in another way: expanding the product, providing feedback, testing, fixing bugs and so on - do not expect them to invest in product development.
There are enough companies in the world that make mistakes in this regard. They create business models that urge “free” developers (ie, “community”) to pay. Consequently, different versions of the product appear: one for the community, and the other for professionals and enterprises (Enterprise), and product owners are starting to hope that users from the community will become buyers of a more expensive and better version.
Will not. Do not even try.
And it’s not even the wrong segmentation of the product. You just need to understand and understand well how and why to segment an open source project.
The second principle was expressed by Matt himself on the basis of a conversation with Fabriz. Fabrizio believes that customers want to pay more for the benefits that the open source product provides, and they do not want to buy the product. In practice, it may look like clients believe in the efficiency and sophistication of the code, as well as in a huge number of users without being tied to a specific owner. The buyer simply does not feel like a limited manufacturer.
That is, the buying companies like the benefits that the open source product brings, but their lawyers do not even want to think about the possibility of sharing the code, solving issues with support, etc. Therefore, they want to buy a commercial license for the code of open source products, as if getting rid of the so-called risks of an open source product. They want commercial open source. They want to see some kind of company that is behind the community, but at the same time they want the community itself too.
Let's see what MySQL did. They released an Enterprise version. They didn’t take anything away from the community, but only added what the companies lacked (better support, wider FAQ, etc.). That is, the community has a GPL (version 2), and the company has a commercial license. Everyone won from this!
Your thoughts?
- I [lovermann ] I personally will add that the thoughts expressed above confirm very well that open source products have a future in the commercial sphere; you only need to learn the right interaction. In the end, the benefits come from both the community and the companies that profit from the use of open source software.