Two principles of successful business in the field of open source
Fabrizio Kapobianko, in a conversation with a certain Matt Asay, the author of a blog on webloginfoworld.com , shared his ideas about the open source industry and voiced two main principles of a successful open source project. So:
The first principle means that there are many markets for open source, and developers who are involved in the development of your product will never be a source of profit. They will bring benefits to the other: expanding the product, providing feedback, testing, correcting mistakes, and so on - do not expect that they will invest money in product development.
There are enough companies in the world that make mistakes in this regard. They create business models that call on “free” developers (ie, “community”) to pay. Consequently, different versions of the product appear: one for the community and the other for professionals and firms (Enterprise), and product owners begin to pin their hopes that users from the community will become buyers of a more expensive and better version.
Will not. Don't even try.
')
And it's not even about the wrong product segmentation. You just need to understand well and understand well how and why segment an open source project.
The second principle was expressed by Matt himself on the basis of a conversation with Fabricius. Fabrizio believes that customers want to pay more for the benefits provided by the open source product, but they do not want to buy the product. In practice, it may look like clients believe in the efficiency and well-developed code, as well as in a huge number of users without being tied to a specific owner. The buyer simply does not feel limited to the manufacturer.
That is, buyer companies like the benefits of an open source product, but their lawyers don’t even want to think about sharing code, resolving issues with support, etc. Therefore, they want to buy a commercial license for the code of open source products, as if getting rid of the so-called risks of open source product. They want commercial open source. They want to see some company behind the community, but at the same time they want the community too.
Let's see what MySQL did. They have released the Enterprise version. They didn’t take anything away from the community, but only added what companies lacked (better support, wider FAQ, etc.). That is, the community has a GPL (version 2), and the company has a commercial license. Won all of this!
Your thoughts?
- I [ lovermann ] personally add on my own that the thoughts expressed above confirm very well that open source products have a future in the commercial sphere; you just need to learn the right interaction. In the end, the benefits come from both the community and firms that profit from the use of open source software.
- Do not attempt to use the community (community) to price the product.
- Sell ​​an open source product to those who don’t like or believe in open source.
The first principle means that there are many markets for open source, and developers who are involved in the development of your product will never be a source of profit. They will bring benefits to the other: expanding the product, providing feedback, testing, correcting mistakes, and so on - do not expect that they will invest money in product development.
There are enough companies in the world that make mistakes in this regard. They create business models that call on “free” developers (ie, “community”) to pay. Consequently, different versions of the product appear: one for the community and the other for professionals and firms (Enterprise), and product owners begin to pin their hopes that users from the community will become buyers of a more expensive and better version.
Will not. Don't even try.
')
And it's not even about the wrong product segmentation. You just need to understand well and understand well how and why segment an open source project.
The second principle was expressed by Matt himself on the basis of a conversation with Fabricius. Fabrizio believes that customers want to pay more for the benefits provided by the open source product, but they do not want to buy the product. In practice, it may look like clients believe in the efficiency and well-developed code, as well as in a huge number of users without being tied to a specific owner. The buyer simply does not feel limited to the manufacturer.
That is, buyer companies like the benefits of an open source product, but their lawyers don’t even want to think about sharing code, resolving issues with support, etc. Therefore, they want to buy a commercial license for the code of open source products, as if getting rid of the so-called risks of open source product. They want commercial open source. They want to see some company behind the community, but at the same time they want the community too.
Let's see what MySQL did. They have released the Enterprise version. They didn’t take anything away from the community, but only added what companies lacked (better support, wider FAQ, etc.). That is, the community has a GPL (version 2), and the company has a commercial license. Won all of this!
Your thoughts?
- I [ lovermann ] personally add on my own that the thoughts expressed above confirm very well that open source products have a future in the commercial sphere; you just need to learn the right interaction. In the end, the benefits come from both the community and firms that profit from the use of open source software.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/1171/
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