Open Source Destined to Be a Loser
July 28, 2009
I found the Business Week story “The Failure of Commercial Open Source Software” a bit of a surprise. I suppose snappy headlines are important, but open source is a relatively new trendlet. I don’t think trends can be failures until they have had a chance to run around the barn several times. Rachael King thinks open source is a flop. Well, maybe not Rachael King. Maybe the author is Peter Yared. Whatever? Business Week is provenance enough for this addled goose.
The argument is that open source has not really gone anywhere. For me the most interesting comment is this one:
It’s been over six years, and no commercial open source companies other than Red Hat, MySQL, and JBoss have had liquidity events. So what happened? Oracle and IBM, which derive the vast majority of their software revenue from proprietary software, have an increasing share of the software market. And there’s a bunch of commercial open source companies still trudging along.
The conclusion is a zinger as well:
The point of open source was for people to share the costs of developing, debugging, and deploying common infrastructure. That does not mean that every successful open source project can sustain a commercial company, especially when they are delivering complicated applications rather than simple plumbing.
With Lemur Consulting holding an open source meet up soon, that company believes its open source search system and its service business model is a good model. Lemur, according to Charlie Hull, is profitable. So we have an example of an open source success.
Some other thoughts:
- The Google is making an open source play. Some think the Google’s heart is not in open source. I think the Google sees open source as a nifty way to antagonize Microsoft.
- Open source search may have a better chance than other types of open source technology. With narrow scope, open source search has a role to play in certain situations.
- Open source seems ripe for entrepreneurs who can market.
In short, open source has made a lap around the barn. Two or three laps to go.
Stephen Arnold, July 28, 2009
Comments
2 Responses to “Open Source Destined to Be a Loser”
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Thanks for the plug, Steven (for those interested, there’s a link to the open source meeting from our blog at http://www.flax.co.uk/blog , we’re hoping to have guys from all the major open source projects attending).
The article you quote is interesting. I’m not sure that ‘liquidity events’ are the only metric of commercial success for a start. Servicing customers, retaining their business, expanding your client base and paying your staff are things you plan to do, selling the company on is something you *might* do some time in the future. In my view there are plenty of successful companies based on open source (see Squiz.net, who just bought Funnelback, or Enfold Systems who support Plone, for just two examples) – they’re no way as large as IBM or Oracle, to be sure, but in their own way they’re successful.
The article also says “The only successful open source companies sell commodities” – but isn’t search technology now a commodity, as proved by Microsoft and others releasing “free” versions? Now the basic technical challenges of indexing and ranking are worked out, what’s the advantage in closed source code? With open source, you can focus on customisability, support and stability.
Perhaps it’s just a matter of timing, and we’re betting that the time is right for open source search.
Charlie Hull,
Most search experts and azure chip consultants think this addled goose should be killed, plucked, and then grilled. Glad you find my comments useful. Honk.
Stephen Arnold, July 28, 2009