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The key is not to remember that Open Source should not be a central business model. It can be part of a broader strategic platform. To make open source work,
by bbgm 18y ago
The key is not to remember that Open Source should not be a central business model. It can be part of a broader strategic platform.
To make open source work, you need to either (a) believe that opening up source is not a big competitive disadvantage, e.g. your customers will still come to you for services, consulting etc (the kind of business you can build on top of an open source platform) or (b) have enough of a community where you can go the MySQL route. There you need to be part of the community as someone else has pointed out.
- tptacek 18y agoIf you sell to large companies, open source is an awesome business model. The #1 and #2 problems you have with large businesses is lead generation and qualifying prospects, so that you aren't wasting $5,000-$10,000 of time and expenses on sales leads that don't pan out, or $50,000 going to conferences that won't result in a single sale. With open source software, the geeks that infest every Fortune 1000 company bring your software in house just to play with it. If you get them to register their email addresses, and you follow up with them inside-sales style, and just 10% of them love what you built, you just converted 100 Fortune 1000 companies to customers. This is exactly the model SourceFire used. It's not a "strategic platform"; it's a go-to-market plan, pure and simple.