Could commercial open source become a victim of its own success? Is the industry putting too much pressure on its flag-bearers to get rich quick? I’ve been meaning for some time to mention this article by MySQL CEO, Marten Mickos entitled “How to be a disruptor”. One of Marten’s tips for success jumped out at me: “Get rich slow”.

“When I see the fantastic growth MySQL is experiencing now, I never forget that it took us 12 years to get here,” he writes. “For the first six years, the team focused exclusively on perfecting the product…. Startups wanting to copy our success need to be aware of the significant ramp-up we invested in.

“Because the MySQL database is an infrastructure product, that growth probably took longer than it would have for an application or consumer product. But the growth phase of the company really did not start until after the product was fine tuned and I was brought in as CEO after five years.”

Would an open source start-up be given the same luxury today to perfect its product away from prying eyes? The success of open source so far means that significant attention is given to a lot of companies that are effectively little more than two-man operations and every little success or failure is held up for examination. It would be a shame if the rush to commercialize open source projects was to the detriment of the quality of the project itself.