Industry veterans bet on open-source model

A team of computer industry veterans, including a former Microsoft executive, are launching an open-source company that aims to be the Dell of the software industry.

The company, called SourceLabs, will provide certification, testing and ongoing support services for open-source software components. On Tuesday, the company announced that it has received $3.5 million in initial funding from Ignition Partners and Index Ventures.

The idea behind SourceLabs is that corporate customers need a reliable partner to procure and maintain open-source products, much as they rely on Dell to provide computing gear, said Brad Silverberg, lead investor at Ignition and a former Microsoft senior vice president who helped expand the software giant's Windows business. SourceLabs is the first open-source start-up he has been involved in.

		Related story Survival of software's fittest In the flat enterprise software market, it's time to hunt or be hunted.

"The trend over the last couple of years, and if you project it forward, it's clear the value (in the software industry) is moving toward maintenance, testing, support and configuration," Silverberg said. "Customers can easily acquire the technology they want via a configurator, just like how they buy computers off the Dell Web site."

SourceLabs will distribute existing open-source software, including server software and enterprise applications, and provide associated services based on a subscription model, said co-founder Byron Sebastian, who recently worked at software infrastructure provider BEA Systems.

Other ex-BEA executives also are working with SourceLabs, including Will Pugh, the new company's chief architect, and Cornelius Willis, who is vice president of marketing and sales. Former BEA chief architect and technology guru Adam Bosworth, who is now working at Google as a vice president in engineering, is also an adviser.

SourceLabs' next moves are to launch a test program with customers and establish partnerships with companies such as open-source database provider MySQL, Sebastian said.

SourceLabs' business model of relying on services mirrors other commercial open-source companies like MySQL, tools company Zend Technologies and middleware provider JBoss. But rather than tie itself to a particular product, SourceLabs will seek to compile and sell services around a large package of open-source components.

The quality of open-source products is high because many developers can view the source code and spot bugs, Silverberg noted. That reliability is missing, though, when it comes to supporting services, he said.

"Today you have to mix and match components and have to put together a system yourself," he said. "The integration of the components is not dependable."

Large computing providers, notably IBM, Novell and Hewlett-Packard, have built large businesses around open-source software such as the Linux operating system. Many smaller companies are sprouting up as well, seeking to gain an advantage over the traditional software company model and break into new areas such as management.

SourceLabs' main point of differentiation will be its support and maintenance services, Sebastian said. He added that the company will participate in the open-source community by providing bug fixes and enhancements to open-source products.

[zaz.net]

Nothing seems new and exciting about this

Really this is doing only part of what RedHat and others are already doing. Novell is also working to provide a stable integrated set of products on top of Linux. Sun Microsystems is even moving into the Open Source world with plans to make it's Solaris OS Open Source and it's continued support for Solaris on X86.

I am glad new companies are coming in and doing this with unassociated products and without marketing their own products. This seems like a good bet for some Open Source projects to increase their use, without being tied in to a specific distribution set of Linux.

I'll be impressed if and when they reach "critical mass"; having enough customers to cover all their expenses and turn a profit.

[lalloo1]

The End of "OpenSource"? may be not!

As large and small companies plunder the open source resources and package them for individual financial gains, it may be justified as progress of times it nonetheless is an end of an intellectual era where the idea was to have "productive fun".

I am not against progress but should not we set up a fund to promote the development of a continuous stream of innovations that eventually led to the formation of this business model? Let's be responsible.

[Nael]

Why is Apache 2.53 missing

From this package? Are you saying that 2.53 is not stable or is a security risk by supporting 1.xx line?