The evolution of open source software
Introduction
If you have followed this blog for a while, you will know about my passion for open source software. I have always predicted that open source software would revolutionize the software industry, but I didn't quite understand how this would happen. My initial views expected that open source would disrupt traditional software companies so much that it would eventually put them out of business. I am now realizing that the future of open source software looks much different than I first expected.
Proprietary software will be quietly built on open source software
One of the primary benefits of open source software is that it reduces the cost to produce software. Gartner agrees with this point; open source software is the most efficient method to create software. Traditional proprietary software vendors are realizing this fact, and are beginning to quietly build their closed software products using lots of open source software.
I say "quietly" because these companies are not going to announce that they are using open source software. In fact, they will prefer if this fact is not known by their customers. There will even be some software companies who choose to use open source in violation of its license, and it is important for us to detect and prosecute this exploitation. However, most companies will abide by the open source licenses.
Gartner has predicted this trend of building closed software with open source elements:
Another way to look this is with the example of building a car. Open source software can provide the wheels, frame and engine of a car. This allows a proprietary software vendor to simply add the final touches that make the car unique to them. This development method greatly reduces the cost to build the car, because the software vendor does not have to "re-invent the wheel".
I see open source software being used all the time when I look at closed products on the market today. Let's look at the example of a DNS appliance. You can bet that over 90% of the code used to create the appliance is likely to be open source code. The operating system is Linux, the DNS server application is Bind, and a variety of subsystems are probably open source. The DNS appliance vendor adds their 10% of value and then sells it to you as it they created the entire thing! This is not necessarily a bad thing, I just want you to realize what is happening.
Open source software vendors will become more closed
There are many open source companies who have formed to meet the need of supporting open source software. These companies are experimenting with various business models that take advantage of the large user base of open source software. Most of these models started by simply offering support services, and the software project remained 100% open source. As the global economy goes through hard times, I believe that these types of business models are not sustainable.
What we are going to see are open source vendors who continue to contribute to a 100% open source project, but they will also add some special value that is only available to paying customers. This is already being done successfully by companies like Digium, the creators of Asterisk. Their Switchvox appliances are based on the open source Asterisk PBX, but it adds proprietary features that give customers a reason to buy the product.
Both Savio Rodrigues and Matt Asay have predicted this evolutionary trend of offering proprietary elements to an open source project. Savio Rodrigues has even gone as far as saying "that proprietary is going to be the savior of the OSS business model".
Before you get upset about proprietary software tarnishing open source, please look at the bigger picture. Open source vendors have paid for enormous amounts of new development to open source projects that would have taken many years of volunteer work. These resources were paid by venture capitalists who invested funds to develop open source businesses. If these business do not succeed, they will no longer be able to employ full-time programmers to work on open source projects. Hopefully you can see how this would have a negative impact on open source.
In my opinion, open source vendors and open source communities provide mutual benefit to each other. The community gets free development resources, while the open source vendor gets money from the subset of paying users. This relationship needs to thrive to realize the maximum benefit to both parties.
So, is this change good or bad?
My prediction is that proprietary vendors will use more open source, and open source vendors will become more closed. The line between these categories is going to become very blurred as they converge around a common middle-ground.
While this evolution of open source is not what I had predicted, I feel positive about these changes. If you are an open source advocate, you should be excited. In the future, not only will you have the same access to open source software that you do now, but successful companies will hire full-time programmers to daily improve upon that software.
If you are a proprietary software user, you should also be excited. This is because open source software will reduce the overall cost of developing software. In the long-run, competition will force these cost savings to be passed to the consumer.
What do you think?
Do you agree with my predictions? Do you agree that this is a positive change? Either way, please let me know with a comment below.
If you have followed this blog for a while, you will know about my passion for open source software. I have always predicted that open source software would revolutionize the software industry, but I didn't quite understand how this would happen. My initial views expected that open source would disrupt traditional software companies so much that it would eventually put them out of business. I am now realizing that the future of open source software looks much different than I first expected.
Proprietary software will be quietly built on open source software
One of the primary benefits of open source software is that it reduces the cost to produce software. Gartner agrees with this point; open source software is the most efficient method to create software. Traditional proprietary software vendors are realizing this fact, and are beginning to quietly build their closed software products using lots of open source software.
I say "quietly" because these companies are not going to announce that they are using open source software. In fact, they will prefer if this fact is not known by their customers. There will even be some software companies who choose to use open source in violation of its license, and it is important for us to detect and prosecute this exploitation. However, most companies will abide by the open source licenses.
Gartner has predicted this trend of building closed software with open source elements:
By 2012, 80 percent of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology. Many open-source technologies are mature, stable and well supported. They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment.Re-using code is not a completly new idea to software companies. These companies have developed internal libraries of software that they can use in multiple products without having to re-write the entire application from scratch. Open source simply expands on this concept. Rather than being limited to an internal software library, open source software provides an enormous global library of software that is worth $25 billion dollars!
Ignoring this will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage. Embedded open source strategies will become the minimal level of investment that most large software vendors will find necessary to maintain competitive advantages during the next five years.
Another way to look this is with the example of building a car. Open source software can provide the wheels, frame and engine of a car. This allows a proprietary software vendor to simply add the final touches that make the car unique to them. This development method greatly reduces the cost to build the car, because the software vendor does not have to "re-invent the wheel".
I see open source software being used all the time when I look at closed products on the market today. Let's look at the example of a DNS appliance. You can bet that over 90% of the code used to create the appliance is likely to be open source code. The operating system is Linux, the DNS server application is Bind, and a variety of subsystems are probably open source. The DNS appliance vendor adds their 10% of value and then sells it to you as it they created the entire thing! This is not necessarily a bad thing, I just want you to realize what is happening.
Open source software vendors will become more closed
There are many open source companies who have formed to meet the need of supporting open source software. These companies are experimenting with various business models that take advantage of the large user base of open source software. Most of these models started by simply offering support services, and the software project remained 100% open source. As the global economy goes through hard times, I believe that these types of business models are not sustainable.
What we are going to see are open source vendors who continue to contribute to a 100% open source project, but they will also add some special value that is only available to paying customers. This is already being done successfully by companies like Digium, the creators of Asterisk. Their Switchvox appliances are based on the open source Asterisk PBX, but it adds proprietary features that give customers a reason to buy the product.
Both Savio Rodrigues and Matt Asay have predicted this evolutionary trend of offering proprietary elements to an open source project. Savio Rodrigues has even gone as far as saying "that proprietary is going to be the savior of the OSS business model".
Before you get upset about proprietary software tarnishing open source, please look at the bigger picture. Open source vendors have paid for enormous amounts of new development to open source projects that would have taken many years of volunteer work. These resources were paid by venture capitalists who invested funds to develop open source businesses. If these business do not succeed, they will no longer be able to employ full-time programmers to work on open source projects. Hopefully you can see how this would have a negative impact on open source.
In my opinion, open source vendors and open source communities provide mutual benefit to each other. The community gets free development resources, while the open source vendor gets money from the subset of paying users. This relationship needs to thrive to realize the maximum benefit to both parties.
So, is this change good or bad?
My prediction is that proprietary vendors will use more open source, and open source vendors will become more closed. The line between these categories is going to become very blurred as they converge around a common middle-ground.
While this evolution of open source is not what I had predicted, I feel positive about these changes. If you are an open source advocate, you should be excited. In the future, not only will you have the same access to open source software that you do now, but successful companies will hire full-time programmers to daily improve upon that software.
If you are a proprietary software user, you should also be excited. This is because open source software will reduce the overall cost of developing software. In the long-run, competition will force these cost savings to be passed to the consumer.
What do you think?
Do you agree with my predictions? Do you agree that this is a positive change? Either way, please let me know with a comment below.
Hi Tristan,
ReplyDeleteI think your assessment is spot on. The evolution as you described is exactly what we at The 451 Group found when we
assessed the business strategies of 100+ vendors involved with open source recently.
Some people saw our report, and the title, as a criticism of open source but it really wasn't meant that way.
I think if people accept that open source is not a business model that is going to displace proprietary software but a development and distribution model that is revolutionizing the way software - both open and closed - is developed and assembled then we can focus on finding the balance that benefits both the commercial software vendors/users and community users/developers.
Hi Tristan-
ReplyDeleteOther Tristan from Digium here! I also agree with 99% of your post but would like to offer a different perspective on this bit:
"The DNS appliance vendor adds their 10% of value and then sells it to you as it they created the entire thing! This is not necessarily a bad thing, I just want you to realize what is happening."
When manufacturers cobble together many open source projects and add their own proprietary code in order to sell a package for some specific business purpose, it's true that the code that they add and the work that they do may add up to about 10% of the code/work necessary to make the product do what it does. And to a very technical user (like you or I) that can do that work themselves, this might be seen as 10% of the "value."
But these projects on their own, without the work that holds them together and the interfaces that often accompany a finished commercial solution, might as well be completely valueless, worthless, if you will, to an end customer that often has neither the time, the technical expertise, nor the inclination to identify the packages needed, learn how they work, stitch them together into something, and then tune it to the desired function.
Having a commercial entity do that work (and available to turn to for support) is quite valuable to the vast majority of users, wouldn't you agree?
-Tristan Degenhardt
Marketing Director at Digium for Switchvox Products
I think standards compliance will become key if nothing else.
ReplyDeleteMatt - Thanks for your comment. I have just discovered your blog and I look forward to reading more of your posts. You have great insight on the commercial adoption of open source.
ReplyDeleteTristan - It is always great to speak with another Tristan. :) I agree with your comment on the value that appliance vendors can bring. When properly designed, tested, and supported, the whole can become greater than the sum of the parts.
You described an "end customer that often has neither the time, the technical expertise, nor the inclination to identify the packages needed, learn how they work, stitch them together into something, and then tune it to the desired function."
This type of user is what Savio labels as category "C". Read more about his OSS Customer Categories here:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2008/04/categorizing_os.html
Hello Tristan,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure this is a "new" trend.
May be there will be new companies adding open source value to their bussiness model (some of them violating licenses too), but I've seen this happening since 2003. And I'm sure I realized that on 2003, but in some areas it was happening even before (I think about embedded devices and Linux kernel).
And I don't mean 'development tools' (Eclipse it's an IDE stardard to develop Java applications for a lot of companies in Spain) or services (Tomcat, LAMP, etc).