Commercial open source DOES add value

Introduction

I am having a great time attending the first annual Utah Open Source Conference. It is always great to meet the people you interact with in the open source community. Last night we had two keynote speakers, Matt Asay and Bruce Perens. Both presenters had great information along with some good humor.

I want to discuss one of the ideas that Bruce Perens mentioned. He believes that open source vendors are not necessary, and that they do not add any value to the open source movement. I disagree with him on this point, and I will share my reasons below.

Marketing

Marketing is a necessary evil in a large economy. It is evil because marketing does not add anything of value to the product. It is necessary because it allows consumers to learn about the product and understand what it does. Some open source projects have been able to create a beautiful website that provides excellent information about the project, but this is not always the case.

Even though the project may have great volunteer developers, they may not have any volunteers with good website design skills. Commercial open source vendors will likely pay for people who specialize in creating beautiful websites and promotional material about the product. This information is crucial for consumers so they can find out if a product offers value and meets their requirements.

Hardware Certification

Open source developers are not going to be able to test their software on all types of hardware. A large community can help to provide this information, because everyone can test the software on the hardware that they use. Even with a large community, there will be hardware that is not tested, or at least not verified to work on the software. Commercial open source vendors can certify their software will run on a particular hardware platform. That is something that IT managers like to see.

Software Integration

Now that you know the open source software will run on your hardware, how do you know that it will also play nicely with the other software that you use? Commercial open source companies can test and certify this compatibility. Independent software companies have an incentive to work with the commercial open source vendor to ensure their product is compatible.

Security

As we learned from the hacked Ubuntu servers, volunteers do not always have the time or incentive to be proactive about security. Someone who is paid to perform a job so they can feed their family will prioritize that job over any volunteer work they do for open source. Open source needs to be proactive about security. The only reliable way to do this is to hire people to work on security. That is something commercial open source vendors can offer, and it is a valuable service.

Support

The reality is that many businesses will not run software that is not commercially supported. Who can support a software product better than the people who make the software? Open source vendors hire people to develop and support their application. This support is very specialized, since the company only supports the products that they make.

Training

Training is an important and necessary requirement for some business to purchase software. Commercial open source vendors can offer this.

Full-time developers

Many open source projects are created and maintained by volunteer developers. Some developers are paid by their employer to work on these projects, at least for part of their duties. Even so, it is rare for an open source project to have many developers who get paid to work on the project full-time. Great things can be accomplished by all developers, but only the ones who are paid to work full-time on open source can prioritize that work over any other work. Commercial open source vendors can afford to hire full-time developers because of the revenue generated by the services listed above.

Conclusion

I believe that the open source software model has the ability to create high-quality software. But I also believe that commercial open source vendors have the ability to offer valuable services that make open source software easier to consume by businesses. They do this by lowering the risks to the customer, and providing a safety-net in case something goes wrong. I wonder if Bruce Perens would agree with the points I made in this post.