The MySQL Dramarama 5
Ok, so MySQL.com moves their enterprise tarballs to the paid-only enterprise downloads section on the site, and makes a few other changes.
Pandemonium.
Now, is this reaction really justified, or just a whole lotta whooey? (Thanks Eben)
The Register’s Developer section has a good overview, and MySQL’s own Kaj Arnö explains on his own blog.
*spacemonkey pats himself on the back for remembering the HTML entity for that last letter in Kaj’s last name
Gavin Clarke hits the nail on the head in the Register article when he says:
“There is concern that restricted access to source will harm the quality of the final product while leaving the community straddled with a second-class database that slips out of touch with MySQL’s development cycles.”
This was the same concern many had with RedHat when they split RedHat Linux into Fedora and RedHat Enterprise. Personally, I couldn’t keep up with the pace of Fedora (seemed I needed to erase all my machines and start over every 6 months) so I switched all my servers to Debian. Problem solved. :-)
Maybe the better question here is this:
Can an open source project be solely sponsored by a corporate entity that’s sole means of income is based on that project?
Something tells me this is a lot harder balance to find than is commonly believed. In fact I suspect it’s just not really a combination that will work, like oil and water.
PostgreSQL is another FOSS database that instead of having only one corporate sponsor, has many. The biggest sponsors seem to have no commercial interest in the project, as they use the technology internally. Of course this seems to be a much more optimal scenario, but how can other FOSS projects find that balance? Or is corporate sponsorship just a bad idea for FOSS?
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Corporate sponsorship (for-profit companies, mind you) isn’t really a bad thing for FOSS, but I do see a problem when there is only one sponsor, and their income depends on the product.
Take a company like IBM. They make a good chunk of money in other areas, so monetizing any FOSS they sponsor isn’t likely a big concern.
Now we have MySQL AB. Their major product is the database of the same name. Without this income, they won’t be around to publish their product. They do have their MaxDB product from SAP, and their cluster product, but I don’t believe those are major profit centers.
What might work (and I haven’t thought too much on this, so it might not be feasible) is to have a non-profit company/foundation maintain the project, while a for-profit company has a license from the non-profit that allows them to monetize the product as they see fit. Actually, this is similar to how the Mozilla Corporation / Mozilla Foundation operates, actually.
Great idea, but you’re right, it doesn’t work ;-)
Maybe I’m just biased, as I’ve learned over the years that it’s a LOT easier to make money off of products than services. I’ve been slogging through a services career my entire life, while watching all my (smarter) friends retire early with their money made from products.
With open source, I don’t think you can make a product and monetize it. You can make money off of services, and there’s nothing wrong with that – but I suspect that once you go open you close the door on any product opportunities.
Then there are the open-but-only-partially folks like SugarCRM where you get the base platform for free, but end up paying for all the stuff you needed in the first place. To me that practice just seems, well, icky.
“Maybe the better question here is this: Can an open source project be solely sponsored by a corporate entity that’s sole means of income is based on that project?
Something tells me this is a lot harder balance to find than is commonly believed. In fact I suspect it’s just not really a combination that will work, like oil and water.”
Basically what you’re saying is “A company cannot subsist on one open source product alone”? That’s a whole lot of hooey.
Compare this to art. Most artists need to be supported; that doesn’t mean that an artist cannot live by making his or her art. It just means that it is very difficult to make a living by creating and selling your own art.
I feel it’s the same with an open source product. It’s hard to make a living, and many folks fail. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Same with open source software—it’s hard, but by no means impossible.
“Basically what you’re saying is “A company cannot subsist on one open source product alone”? That’s a whole lot of hooey.”
I think the issue that Mitch is getting at is that if a company creates an open source project solely for the purpose of selling services and products around it, they’re putting themselves in a rather delicate position. On the other hand, you have companies like 37 Signals who sponsors Ruby on Rails, but none of their income is derived from Rails itself.
Touche on the hooey reference ;-)
You got me wrong though – I’m not saying that. I’m saying that if a company created a software project and open sourced it, they would have an unusually difficult time monetizing on that software as a product. Of course they can monetize services, and probably would do a good job at it and make some decent money.
The point I’m getting at is that (IMHO) open source software cannot be monetized as a product. And if the opposite can be demonstrated, please respond in the comments for discussion :-)
Another point of this post is also to see if there are any examples of companies that managed to monetize open source software as a product, not as a service.
MySQL has given it a shot – and their tremendous marketshare due to being considered the default database for web applications has made it a lot easier on them (and in that regard they may be more unique) – but I’d wager they don’t make a lot of income on the product side, and are still bound by the services model for meaningful income.