There is NO Open Source Business Model
The open source definition is almost 20 years old. Red Hat at 22 is a $2B company. MySQL and JBoss have had great acquisition exits. Cloudera and Hortonworks are well on their way to becoming the next billion dollar software companies. But I would like to observe that despite these successes, there is no open source business model.
There's certainly an engineering imperative to developing open source software, and the economics are compelling, but building a business is about solving customer problems. Red Hat is considered the quintessential "open source" company, but I tell a story of Red Hat success on Medium that is all about the business execution of three CEOs in three markets. There is no open source business model.
interesting, but did DEC Ultrix share codes with its open communities as open source business model do?
Nice job getting the defence of the 'There is no open source business model' proposition down to an 8 min read, longer in my case :-). As complementary observation I offer that: The person wanting the 1/4" hole invariable buys the hole making service and although they prefer an affable selection, 'painless' commissioning, and unremarkable operating experience that person is largely indifferent to the 'nature' of the drill bit, as long as the hole meets their acceptance criteria. In summary the customer buys a user experience.
Too bad that Cloudera and Hortonworks have bad technology and a cost of acquisition far greater than the revenue generated per user (LTV). Google and Amazon give away most of this for a fraction of the price, enterprise sales of inferior software is a tough racket.
Good read, Stephe. You even worked in an OSF reference!
Well said.