An open source project is a community of participants that gathers around a free software commons, with each participant aligning a fragment of their interests with the interests of all the others there in order to collaborate. The OSI-approved license gives them the freedom to do so. Each participant comes to the community with their own individual interest, which in the case of a business will stem from their own business model.

An open source community is thus a mix of many motivations. If there’s only one motivation present – only one “business model” – it’s unlikely there is any true community either. People only care about the business model when there’s only one business; in a real community the only way to get along is to mind your own business (model).

As you are aware the use of an OSI approved license does not require a collaborative development model, and the license used for a vendor’s *product* is not necessarily the same license applied to the underlying *project*.

The issue then is how and why vendors should engage in collaborative development and how and why vendors should use particular licensing options in order to benefit the vendor, the customer, and the underlying project. I have no doubt that this is completely plain to you, but it is not to others.

So yes the focus is on “what *services*, what *capabilities*, what *value* can be delivered by best use of open source”, and also what approaches to development and product licensing best deliver those.

Now I say ??????? because to me the one thing that open source *does* clarify is precisely the question of development and licensing strategies. The value I would expect you to add is not papering over what the OSI and the open source community have already made completely plain. Rather, the ??????? of your “business model” discussion should be focused on what *services*, what *capabilities*, what *value* can be delivered by best use of open source.

Surely you understand that by definition, open source licensing is…open source licensing. There’s not much explaining to do there!

Matt Aslett makes great observations about open source business models in a recent blog follow-up discussion: I am very glad that they took that decision, because in hindsight the statement “there is no open source business model” would have been…..

Thanks for your comment. I think the key issue is that it wasn’t immediately obvious to people that open source is not a business model, and that the confusion was potentially detrimental to open source. The thing that triggered the report for me was hearing multiple execs from companies outside open source taking about using “the open source business model” and assuming that it was a fast track to success that went something like:

release software under open source license -> downloads -> ??????? -> profit!

Clearly the more companies followed this misunderstanding the greater the risk that open source would be seen to be failing to deliver on this “model”. We know from experience of talking to and working with clients that our report has helped some people/companies to identify the development and licensing strategies they needed to put in place of ??????? to ensure that they are successfully engaging with open source.

I’m sure that a writer of your skills could easily publish several reports using the template “X” is not a business model. For example, it is immediately obvious to me that “Software is not a business model”. It is equally obvious that “IT is not a business model”. Indeed, “Technology is not a business model.”

My business model question for you is this: what actual investable hypothesis can be informed from any such perspectives?