Martin von Willebrand's Blog

This summer has brought a lot of discussions and views on open source business models, notably regarding the open core business model.

I’m linking some here, for my own and others’ reference.

As always, Carlo Daffara continues writing on and analysing open source business models and comments the recent open core debate. His basic point is that control on code is a tradeoff against contributions.

Simon Phipps heated up the debate with a post on down-sides of open core. Comments from many (in Simon’s blog there were also comments by Mårten Mickos and Henrik Ingo):

– Mark Radcliffe, not agreeing and arguing that open core should not be demonized, and it serves a purpose for the FOSS community,

– Mårten Mickos, although agreeing to some points, basically sees open core as a necessary tool,

– Carlo Daffara, restating that open core strategy trades off contributions and thus requires more development expenditure or the like.

These deserve some thinking. A business needs value to be traded, but how can and should the value be optimised? That will depend on the type of software/service, and every business experimenting with these is welcomed by me at least.

It all comes down to the value offered: as long as a business is able to leverage more value than other relevant vendors, it will thrive. The value offered can be e.g. service for it-departments, software license, cloud service for users, or an existing user base (e.g. Facebook).

The other side of the coin is the cost to keep the business up and running, developing with innovation. Here the community becomes relevant, as does the ease of contribution, and the existing user-base.