Initially I felt that the free model would gain substantially in the downturn, but instead what happens is that as the community comes under pressure, they are less inclined to be doing things for free and more inclined to make revenue.
One of the biggest misconceptions in software is that open source equals free. The early commercial open-source vendors like MySQL and JBoss
were able to build decent businesses on top of a license/support-only
business model, but over time we've seen that approach become difficult
to grow beyond a certain threshold.
I suspect that in 2009 it will start becoming clearer as to what you pay for and why you should. Redmonk analyst Michael Cote
made the prediction that next year "it will be cool to pay for
software" and I agree. It's one thing to consume open-source software
and quite another to pay for it.
Most open source vendors have tweaked their business models to
include some kind of additional value only available as part of a
subscription. This has brought various cries of derision suggesting
that the code is no longer good as the community doesn't get to do QA,
along with welcoming arms from investors and developers who want to
monetize the code.
And it turns out that CTOs want to pay for the additional value, as Matt Asay found out from the New York CTO Club:
From what I heard today, it's a non-issue. Every CTO
that spoke up (and it was a very open forum) said that they are happy
to pay for proprietary extensions to open-source software, and
criticized pure-play open-source vendors for not providing an obvious,
compelling reason to pay: proprietary bits. (One actually said that we
have built a great financial model...for SIs, not for ourselves.)
Typically we now see an "open core"
freely available with "exclusive" or proprietary features only
available when you pay. If you are trying to build a commercial
business on top of an open source project, this is likely the right
answer.
Selling support only has proven to be challenging--and will likely get
even harder to do as cash-strapped companies will force their
developers to maintain software instead of outlaying more cash.
Dave Rosenberg writes a great blog on the Open Source Industry. His two recent articles,
