Comments on: Open source grows beyond its roots

Zimbra shows off wiki as the start-up and its cohorts push into new areas and compete on features, not just price.

[SqlserverCode]

Waiting for IBM

Waiting for Oracle/IBM to buy some of these companies
That's what happens when you are a small and succesful open source company

http://otherthingsnow.blogspot.com

[maverick_nick]

Why buy?

Why would any company want to buy an open source vendor? The reason any company is purchased, is for their market share. Buying a company for it proprietary products makes sense, but you can simply repackage an open source product without having to buy their company.

Case in point: Oracle and Redhat. Larry said that he wouldn't buy Redhat, but would distribute and provide support on their products. Oracle can spend less money on gaining Redhat's market share in direct competition, than buying the company.

[Savio.Rodrigues]

Forget free, how about community?

This article glosses over maybe the key reason that open source succeeds, community. Being free is great, but a free product that I can't find a forum to get help or google to find helpful information from tons of others using the product isn't all that helpful.

[DavesTechShop]

Wouldn't it be ironic if the next Microsoft emerged out of this?

Martin, I have enjoyed reading all your articles on the business of open source software. Keep up the good work.

http://blog.davestechshop.net
http://blog.davestechshop.net/archive/2006/08/14/OpenSourceNeedsMoreInnovation.aspx

[t8]

The next Microsoft is already here.

They are called Google.

Google uses Linux on their supercomputer that enables their search services.

They use other open source products and give away their products too.

[teddy_be]

New shape to same old Business model...

Let's not forget that when you buy so called "Closed source" SW license, you are actually financing the next wave of feature being fuelled in the subsequent release because the version you just bought as been financed by the initial creator of the SW.
So FREE in Open Source worl just means that this initial financing come from somewhere else (selling services/HW!? See RedHat or Digium in VOIP).
Making a community work around OS code is just bringing back the value to where it is to be created, not in the IPR of the code but on the service that is created on-line. Software in the end is just another way (and maybe the only) to store a Service ! ;-)
Br, Luc

[shongelolo]

Capitalism Drives Open Source

In each iteration of open source the business models get more sophisticated. No initial SW cost and no M&S costs make sense. There are still a lot of issues for the general business user (i.e. non-techie) somebody has to do buy the HW, do the installation, configuration, patch management, backups and monitoring that must still be done. It is interesting to see capitalism at work - in response to these hurdles companies such as Appitas (www.appitas.com) are offering hosted versions of the open source products at costs significantly lower than SaaS or Licensed SW. We are also seeing companies like SpikeSource (www.spikesource.com) providing certified stacks of different open source solutions. All in all, we are seeing the next big technology wave!