Open-source vendors: Monopolies waiting to happen?
JBoss developer
Loopfuse co-founder [I must have been very, very tired when I called Roy a JBoss developer] Roy Russo wonders if all open-source companies are de facto monopolistic. Like many others that I respect (Dave Rosenberg, Lonn Johnston, President Bush, Oscar the Grouch), Russo says any market ultimately has room for only one purveyor of free software. He writes:
(Open-source software) companies focusing on proprietary competition win out in the end, but if history is a guide, they also manage to squash their own OSS competitors by doing so.
So much for peace, love and open source.
I understand Roy's point: a successful open-source company tends to suck investment dollars out of the industry. What new Linux vendor (or, rather, its would-be investors) wants to compete with Red Hat? Any new open-source application server vendors itching to compete with JBoss? How about someone to go after MySQL?
Probably not.
But I wonder if this isn't simply because we're still very limited in our appreciation of open source. We tend to think of open-source competition in very simplistic terms: free versus expensive and open versus closed.
Unfortunately, this completely misses most of the real value in open source, and the various business models that have arisen and will continue to develop to monetize it. There may not be room for Yet Another Open-Source Business Intelligence Vendor (YAOSBIY for short) ;-), but surely, there's room for plenty more in this space who drive greater performance, superior ease of use, etc.? Open source becomes a facet of how such companies compete--an important one but not the outcome-determinative one.
At some point, I'm convinced that most software will be licensed and distributed in an open-source fashion. Why? Because I see it as a vastly more efficient way to get software into customers' hands. So long as we prove that money can be made in this fashion, it will dominate.
That means that there will be ample opportunity for exceptional vendors of software for ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), ECM (enterprise content management), etc., to distribute via open-source licensing. You can already see the aura of open source giving way to its practical, day-to-day business benefits. It's not about religion anymore. It's about superiority. Surely, we have room for more superior customer-serving companies?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
http://opensourceornot.blogspot.com/2007/07/open-source-competition.html
http://opensourceornot.blogspot.com/2007/07/open-source-competition.html
just creating "me-too" apps that are not really differentiated. But its still hard
to tell as we typically on have 1-3 vendors compared with the proprietary
world that has 10 or more in many cases.
I'm not as convinced as I was that there can be only one winner BTW. There is
one other thing that I am starting to see--that there is room for the same
product when it's built on a different technology. For example, Hyperic is Java
and Zenoss is Python. Competing products, but different developer
communities.
Side note: I appreciate the Oscar the Grouch reference but please don't
include with GWB. I grew up in NJ, not Utah :>
just creating "me-too" apps that are not really differentiated. But its still hard
to tell as we typically on have 1-3 vendors compared with the proprietary
world that has 10 or more in many cases.
I'm not as convinced as I was that there can be only one winner BTW. There is
one other thing that I am starting to see--that there is room for the same
product when it's built on a different technology. For example, Hyperic is Java
and Zenoss is Python. Competing products, but different developer
communities.
Side note: I appreciate the Oscar the Grouch reference but please don't
include with GWB. I grew up in NJ, not Utah :>
- Open + VC = Not Open
- by botchagalupe July 17, 2007 11:47 AM PDT
- The VC companies that are clamoring to invest in OSS are the ones who created most of the proprietary vendors that OSS vendors are now competing with. OSS projects might start out with the best intentions but when big money is involved the solutions will become less open. IMHO, the biggest impact OSS will bring on the enterprise is lowering the cost of software and I agree change the licensing model. This is something the VC?s don?t get. They look at all these OSS startups as the next Tivoli, MicroMuse, Mirimba, ? I agree that OSS is going to change the way software is sold, but the money will be made in service IP and not in software IP.
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