What does Open Source 2015 still have to do with Open Source 2005?

I can still remember the first time I consciously came into contact with open source. We ran a few Linux servers in my company at the time and whenever there were any tricky configurations or critical issues that needed to be resolved, this expert from an open source infrastructure service provider came along: tousled hairstyle, knitted sweater, Chaos Computer Club T-shirt.

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He demonized everything that came from Microsoft and of course did not hold back with snide remarks as soon as he spotted a proprietary product somewhere. He didn’t care about money, punctuality either, and super-urgent business-driven customer requests even more so. I perceived open source as a religion. For me, coming from a business background, this was fascinating and incomprehensible in equal measure.

The world was simple:
Open Source = good
Proprietary and commercial = bad.

Today, 10 years later, a lot has changed in this respect. Open Source (OS) has established itself and is even leading the way in many areas. Fortunately, the religious war that used to be fought bitterly has more or less fizzled out. Today, publishing software under an open source license is the method of choice for quickly achieving a decent market penetration. The number of downloads is often deliberately confused with the number of installations and the number of registered users is equated with the size of the community. This type of currency is then used in marketing to make the products bigger.

At first glance, not much has remained of the noble goals of creating an open, non-profit and collaborative software world. While society (and therefore the economy) has undergone a slow but steady transformation over the last 10 years towards more tranquillity, less commerce (for those who can afford it), more sustainability and a more social lifestyle, open source has developed a fundamentally relaxed relationship with money and business. Not surprising really, as there has been good money to be made with open source in recent years. And many of the former open source protagonists are getting on in years.

It is easy to maintain an idealistic lifestyle without children, without a mortgage and without obligations. However, by your mid-30s at the latest, the time available usually becomes scarce. Just at the time when your focus in life may change a little. Does this mean the former ideals have been betrayed? No, in my opinion. After all, it’s part of life and personal development to revise your opinions and attitudes and adapt them to changing circumstances. You don’t have to throw everything overboard.

What has remained?

Today’s open source software scene is characterized by strong companies that offer a paid enterprise version in addition to the free version under OS license. Among them are a few that only see open source as a means of selling their enterprise versions. A few months ago, for example, a sales representative of an “open source product” told me: “You can’t use the Community Edition for your project. It’s not a product, it’s just code. “* When I asked him what constitutes a product, he mentioned the support, the SLA and the account management that his company provides. In other words, all things that an open source agency traditionally provides itself and rightly likes to keep for itself, as these things make a decisive contribution to the agency client’s user experience. This doesn’t really work out for anyone. It is a fact that very few companies have managed to become profitable through enterprise revenues alone. In my opinion, those who take this route alone will fail in the long term. It’s much more about revitalizing the entire ecosystem around your product and getting community members to work together. And to generate revenue streams that are fair for everyone and can be paid for. Not that easy.

The collaboration

Slowly, even the large proprietary software manufacturers have begun to integrate open source components into their business. Microsoft has made enormous efforts in this area and now has the following sentences in its marketing collateral:

The more we work togheter – the more opportunities open up for everyone.

It’s a rather late insight, but a logical one in a business world that is slowly realizing that working together probably benefits everyone more than working against each other. And it gives us hope that this will lead to a more open software industry, because that can only be in the interests of the customer and therefore in the interests of the service providers.

Going open source – the rocky road

For many manufacturers, it would obviously be a great advantage to publish their software under an open source license. I am thinking, for example, of CMS manufacturers such as Sitecore, Adobe (EM) etc. The fact that they don’t do this is due to two things. On the one hand, there is a lack of strategic insight here or there. On the other hand, the transformation to an open source company is extremely costly and to a certain extent risky. There is also a lack of specialists with genuine open source business expertise. However, the fact that large companies, which generally have an even more difficult time, are tackling this transformation and investing significantly is a very good sign. We will all benefit from the resulting effect in the future, end customers and the software industry alike.

 

(* No, it wasn’t anyone from Magento!)