It’s been tempting to write a post about open source licensing trends and how they relate to commercial business strategies, given ongoing interest in our previous posts about the relative decline of the GPL. Every time I start to write a post though I realise that I’d just be repeating myself, most notably The future [...]

The reason we are confident that the comparative decline in the use of the GNU GPL family of licenses and the increasing significance of complementary vendors in relation to funding for open source software-related vendors will continue is due to the analysis of our database of more than 400 open source software-related vendors, past and [...]

I tweeted last week that VC funding for open source related vendors was up 95% in Q3, driving by significant investment in ‘big data’ related vendors. In calculating that percentage I had overlooked an important deal, however: one that re-writes the record books and raises existential questions about investment in ‘open source related vendors’. There [...]

Brian Proffitt asked an interesting question last week with regards to the OpenStack project: ‘can a commercial vendor lead a project as openly as a foundation?’ It’s an interesting question, and one that is particularly prescient given the observed re-balancing of control and community. In fact. we’ve previously cited OpenStack as an example of this [...]

The 451 Group’s CAOS practice last week published its latest long format report: Going Open, Going Closed. The report is the latest in a series from the 451 CAOS practice examining the impact of open source on business strategies. As previously indicated, it takes a look at a number of vendors that have successfully ‘gone [...]

One of the common myths about open source software is that it is developed by communities of individuals. It is a myth that continues to propagate despite multiple sources of data that show the depth and breadth of corporate contributions to open source software. Communities come in many shapes and sizes, however, and corporate-dominated projects [...]

This week’s post on the decreased use of the term ‘open source’ as an identifying differentiator in some companies’ marketing material generated a lot of attention and comment, with numerous industry watchers pitching in their perspectives on the reasons for the decline. If you haven’t read the original post it might be worth doing so [...]

I’ve been examining the trend of open source-related vendors disengaging from open source development and licensing as part of my research for the next CAOS research report. One of the things that I have observed in relation to open source-related business strategies in recent months is the decreased use of the term ‘open source’ as [...]

One of the ‘things I wrote down during OSBC’ was this statement from Benchmark EIR, Rob Bearden: “Misalignment between a business model and the community’s tolerance point will never be accepted. This will manifest itself in multiple distributions.” At first glance the statement may seem obvious to anyone who has studied open source-related business strategies [...]

As previously mentioned, The 451 Group was very pleased to be able to participate in this year’s Future of Open Source Survey. We believe that the results provide critical insight into the wants and needs of end users that will help shape the evolution of vendor business strategies designed to meet the long-term needs of [...]

It looks like it’s time again to ponder on Red Hat’s ability to (nearly) make $1bn in annual revenue and wonder why open source has not produced more billion dollar success stories. Matt Asay doubts whether there will ever be another pure play open source company with $1bn in revenues. I would go further and [...]

“the trends appear to be moving away from control and back toward community and collaborative development, which is why The 451 Group has advised that established vendors that rely on controlling open source development projects need to evaluate how they might be able to transition to more collaborative development practices and permissive licensing” The 451 [...]

One of the primary proof-points of the success of open source has been its adoption by previously proprietary software vendors. In February 2007 The 451 Group’s CAOS practice released its third report, Going Open, which examined the increasing adoption of open source licensing by traditionally-licensed software companies and captured the industry best-practices to ensure a [...]

One of the central arguments of our recent Control and Community report on open source business strategies was that many so-called open source vendors are failing to enjoy the full benefits of the open source development model by attempting to control their associated projects. Specifically, we wrote: “there is a clear trend back toward community-led [...]

It’s good to see Mark Hinkle has a new open source-related blog (The Fountainhead) although I was somewhat amused by his first post, Open source status report reveals good health and profits. It wasn’t so much the relative health of open source, which is supported by his list of open source-related statistics, but the reference [...]

“Matt Aslett says only Red Hat can survive in a post-apocalyptic commoditzed wasteland”, comments Alan Shimel. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. What I did do was describe the conundrum that I believe is discouraging venture capital investment in open source distributors. Specifically, when we talk about “open source distributors” we are focused specifically on companies [...]

Matt Asay’s recent article in The Register If you open source an old market, are you doomed to fail? highlights the need for open source specialist vendors to innovate, as well as commoditize. This is an issue that has been discussed regularly by CAOS practice – most recently in our Control and Community report into [...]

We have had a couple of queries this week regarding the open source business strategy framework we have used for the last two years or so in our analysis of open source-related business strategies. The framework has evolved over time based on changing strategies, our research, and feedback from clients (and non-clients), but the last [...]

We were pretty pleased with our recently published Control and Community report on open source-related business strategies, but then we are biased. Fortunately some people have been good enough share their thoughts on the report, so you don’t have to take our word for it. Here’s some links to the reaction, along with a few [...]

Gather the pitchforks and light the torches. Hordes of marketing men are gathering, intent on invading the free and open source software village armed with copyright assignment policies and turning everyone into mindless corporate contributors. As Michael Meeks (via LWN.net) has warned there is “‘a sustained marketing drive coming’ to push the copyright-assignment agenda” As [...]