Comments on: Open-source companies crashing en masse? Puh-lease!

One analyst thinks open-source companies are on the decline, but he's got his facts wrong.

Trip Chowdhry is very stupid. I wonder how he got his position.

[odubtaig]

Look up the term "failing upwards". It's actually quite depressing.

[lwalter71]

End user organizations will still invest in technology, but their risk tolerance for mega-projects (in terms of time and $$) is going down. Having worked at a software company that lived on 8-figure deals during the tech slowdown in the early 2000's, my personal experience is that technology businesses that have cash, have customers, and can save customers money are in a better position in a downturn. Siebel Systems was generating more revenue at the time compared to salesforce, but Siebel was managing a steep decline in its business while salesforce was managing significant growth.

As far as the equity research opinion, a contrarian opinion (regardless of how supportable or unsupportable) that stirs up tons of internet traffic is almost certainly good for Mr. Chowdhry's business, or at least for his awareness.

The challenge and opportunity for good commercial open source companies is to keep monetizing the customer value that they deliver, and to continue to prove Mr. Chowdry wrong as Red Hat has done.

-Lance

[RoryMacD]

Like this, you mean:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2008/11/alfrescos_open.html

Don't get me wrong, agree with your criticisms of Trip, but I think a lot of people play with the figures to make a commercial point don't they?