Comments on: SugarCRM CEO Roberts replaced by board member

John Roberts, the fiery commercial open-source innovator, resigns for undisclosed reasons and is immediately replaced by interim CEO and SugarCRM board member Larry Augustin.

[arjenlentz]

Interesting time to jump...

[splendidcrm]

We spoke with John Roberts 3 years ago and he did not seem very open to us.

[vc_investor]

FWIW, I turned down SugarCRM at Series A because of Roberts. I thought he had way too much of a "open source is cool" religion and not enough grounding in the nuts and bolts of business-building. The idea of selling services was never a good model. This transition is clearly about the business not meeting expectations and I am sure that in large measure it is because of the freeware foundation of the business. Open source applications make no sense as a business model. This change is confirmation that the investors *finally* realize it. Too bad DFJ, Walden and NEA had to spend $50M to figure out the obvious.

[jlee888]

I wonder what this means for Jive

[jimmyjjjj]

This reporting is pathetic. Disclaimer aside, could you dislodge your nose, write objectively, and educate us about what _really_ happened? CEO's don't get fired so that someone else may "continue their good work". I'm surprised you didn't throw in a "..spend more time with his family" in there somewhere....

[Matt Asay]

The problem is that you expected it to be "reporting." It's a blog. Please learn the difference. IT's clearly labeled as a blog, my biases are clearly identified, and yet you clearly didn't catch on. Sorry to disappoint, but you got exactly what the blog purports to be.

[jimmyjjjj]

Matt - kudos for replying.

I dispute your claim that this page is "clearly" labeled as a blog. The website looks like an official cnet page and the title/crumb says "Home/News/The Open Road".

I appreciate your time and 'reporting' - and my criticism is meant to be constructive. Cheers,

-jimmy

[chowfun]

This is a terrible report. Clearly biased. Reading this report wasted 3 minutes of my life.

[Matt Asay]

If it makes you feel better, reading your comment only wasted 3 seconds of mine. Cheers!

[BrucePerens]

Uh, there does seem to be a lot missing here. If Roberts had left because of a family or medical reason, that would be clearly enunciated so that there would not be a perception of a problem in the company.

I think, Matt, that we need to at least entertain the possibility that their business model isn't working.

It's really hard to make Open Source as the main product of a company, and make money. That's why most Open Source is not made that way. And unfortunately the problem with "Open Core" is that you're back to competing as a proprietary company, rather than an Open Source one, again.

And Sugar suffered the usual problem of profit-center Open Source: it had its own community which wasn't really connected to anything else - and certainly wasn't connected with the non-profit-center Open Source community which produces most of Open Source.

But the bottom line is probably that the company missed sales goals for too long. Even if you're doing everything right, it's going to be hard to make them this year.

[kksf69]

John Roberts is a nice guy with a revolutionary ideas but anyone who has worked with SugarCRM has seriously wondered why it has taken the board so long to have John move on to "pursue other interests".

John ruled SugarCRM by irrational emotions and not the nuts and bolts of a business.

This approach worked fine when orders were coming in without any work ... not the case today.

Good Luck Larry. It will be interesting to see who else moves on to "pursue other interests".

[SugarInsider]

As far as I know sales goals have been reached or are close. Orders are coming in. Business is brisk in this bad economy. The business model of giving away the razor handle and selling the blade (giving away the Open Source version and selling Pro) is working.

I suspect they wanted a more seasoned CEO to take the company public. That's been the direction.