What Microsoft giveth, Jive taketh away

The Web has been aflutter with the news that through its new BizSpark program, Microsoft is seeding startups with its software to entice them to steer clear of open source. That's the view from OStatic and others that I've read, and it's probably true, at least in part.

Will it work? No. Good startups are always looking to save money, and will appreciate the "free production licenses for application hosting and management servers, including Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, BizTalk Server and Systems Center and soon, Microsoft Dynamics CRM," as OStatic suggests. But they're unlikely to move to Windows from Linux, for example, because Linux is a long-term performance and cost choice, not a three-year "I'll use it because it's free...for now" choice (which is all that BizSpark gets new startups.

Interestingly, in the same week that Microsoft started doling out the software, collaboration vendor Jive started taking it away from open-source projects. As Orion Addis, Jive Software's sales representative covering the Bay Area, wrote to an open-source peer of mine:

We no longer offer free licensing of Clearspace, Clearspace Community, or Jive Forums to open source projects. We are only selling licensing moving forward. Clearspace Community licensing is listed at $xx,xxx per application server CPU per year or $xx,xxx a year in our hosting facilities for <500,000 page views a month.

Does this suggest some nefarious design on Jive's part, charging for software it used to give away gratis? No. I suspect it is simply an indication that Jive is looking to make money where it can, and probably incurred more cost than benefit in supporting open-source projects free of charge.

The two companies - Microsoft and Jive - arrived at very different conclusions as to what would drive sales for them. This will ever be the case, and it's what makes open source, in particular, so fascinating. One person's cancer is another person's freedom, as it were. The value of 'free' shifts and changes over time.

[royrusso]

Atlassian (http://www.atlassian.com/) continues to offer their applications for free to open source projects.

[MadLyb]

My company uses Atlassian and it simply does not scale. Our implementation is pretty large, but no amount of hardware seems to resolve it.

[royrusso]

We threw JIRA on some cheap box in the corner of our ops center and it works great.

Also, we used Atlassian products all throughout JBoss... if it scaled at JBoss, it should scale for most.

[williamlouth]

I think this is a much better summary:

<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/06/open_schwartz/">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/06/open_schwartz/</a>

[mattjive]

We discontinued the Open Source program you mentioned because it simply wasn't very effective: it had low participation and wasn't very well targeted or promoted. Jive supports Open Source in many ways, including event sponsorship, contributing code and running several Open Source projects ourselves. Jive is also very committed to open standards and will continue to be. We're always evaluating the places we invest our time and resources and try to pick the best programs. Unfortunately, this one didn't make the cut.

Thanks,
Matt
CTO, Jive Software

[Penguinisto]

It depends on the OSS license... if Jive's products were released under GPL, LGPL, BSD, and similar, then who needs Jive? Just fork the existing source and carry on (or build a competitor product).

/P

[Beenthinking]

Shouldn't use the Cancer vs Freedom metaphor....1. It makes no sense, 2. its potentially insulting.

Software companies exist to make money. Make no mistake. Only reason to write code. The two differing models are interesting in that they point to different corporate needs and showcase how both companies plan on influencing the markets moving forward. Jive Software continues to be a very innovative, PROFITABLE, software company that provides products that enterprises, organizations and open source projects want. Microsoft...well, goes without saying. The most interesting aspect appears to be the two models given the stage both are at with their respective products for the target market.

[The_Decider]

"Only reason to write code"

People who would write this shouldn't be coding.

You code for the challenge and the enjoyment of it. That is where all quality code starts.