Comments on: The open core issue (part two)

By: Matthew Aslett

Matthew Aslett — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:21:47 +0000

Thanks Carlo. As usual I agree with you.

By: Matthew Aslett

Matthew Aslett — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:40:13 +0000

“If the companies see that the way to gain more money is by being proprietary then why don’t they develop and sell proprietary products?”

They do. They also happen to develop and make available open source software.

I haven’t refused to discuss anything. I have just listed every reason I know why this is a difficult strategy to implement. If you think anything I have stated is incorrect I will be glad to discuss it with you in a constructive manner.

By: Neary Consulting » Open Core is a bad word

Neary Consulting » Open Core is a bad word — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:29:05 +0000

[...] Aslett continued his series on Open Core yesterday, and pointed to my post on the subject. He says, and I agree, that we can’t expect [...]

By: Jack

Jack — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:46:35 +0000

“My intention is not to be confrontational but to take a balanced view of the potential problems related to the open core strategy.”

Then you fail. This is nothing but a attempt at whitewashing. An article in support “open core” and not an impartial analysis of the debate around it.

This can be clearly seen by the way that you structured the article. You start by analyzing the term “crippleware” and use most of time in here since you can attempt to defend “open core” from that characterization.

Then you move to others criticisms, valid criticisms, and you deflate everyone of them. The extensive analysis that you made on “crippleware” is gone and you refuse to discuss them. They would make the term “open core” look very bad!

A biased article to try to support “open core” but failed.

In end we can clearly see two things: “open core” has all the faults of the proprietary development and business model; the advantages of “open source” are gone!

If the companies see that the way to gain more money is by being proprietary then why don’t they develop and sell proprietary products?

This is the question that needs to be answered!

By: Carlo Daffara

Carlo Daffara — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:41:16 +0000

Dear Matthew, a wonderful post (as usual). I absolutely share your overall view, especially
the fact that we need to move away from a confrontational model, and try to see how to create models that work. That was the reason for my post: along with the previous ones, I believe that there is no single *best* model, but a dynamic combination of models, with companies trying to optimize towards their own goal choosing and moving between models.
I absolutely agree that not all companies want to replicate the success of Linux or Apache; but especially some of the smaller open source companies still looking for a model may think that open core is inherently better just because it provides temporarily higher revenues, while in the longer term a different combination of models may be better.
As for OpenStack, I already shared with you my idea that I believe that in the future there will be a larger number of consortium-like organization with important, horizontal projects; it simply makes more sense from an economic point of view, since (like Matt Asay points out) it is a common technical requirement, not a monetary source.
Again, great post!