There is no open source business model - only people selling complementary goods, and using an open source project as a development and distribution model.
8. Reasons to create a community
• Market education – seed new technology
• Lead generation – want to grow sales
• Ecosystem enablement – provide a low-touch way for people to
integrate with your platform
• Portfolio leverage – seed market with core tech to up-sell
• Competitive hedge – first to market with open source, or undermining
proprietary competitor
• ...
13. Open Source as a substitute
• Compelling open source projects undermine demand for proprietary
alternatives
• “Innovator's Dilemma” - difficult for proprietary companies to react
16. Complements of open source
• Services
• Software
• Hardware
• Documentation
• Advertising
• Support
• Consulting
• Training
17. Community types
• User & Deployer communities
• Engaged user – Want to share experiences, help others advocate project
• Deployer/developer – Packagers, integrators, documentation, translation,
people who bridge code to user
• Core developer communities
• Extension developer – plug-ins, extensions, integration with 3rd party
applications
• Core developer – Core code
19. Target audience
• Education
• What problems do I solve?
• How do I fit into what people know?
• Promotion
• Channels (blogs, conferences)
• Press and analyst relations
• Marketing message on website
• Download and install process
20. Example: Linux
• 1990s: Unix market fragmentation
• Late 1990s: Linux begins to disrupt – adopted by Oracle, IBM as
standard platform
• Linux use-cases expanded – HPC, embedded
• 2015: Operating system is a commodity
21. Example: Red Hat
• 1990s: Red Hat solves a pain point for early Linux users – how to install
and integrate many independent pieces of software
• Late 1990s: Oracle and others choose Red Hat Linux to standardise
packaging and delivery
• Early 2000s: Red Hat successfully leverages early adoption through
application certification and high standard of support to grow
subscription revenues
• 2015: Red Hat has $2bn in revenues, 70% from Linux business
22. Example: IBM
• Late 1990s: IBM invested in Apache and Linux
• Leverage Linux on IBM z Series, and Power64
• Grew huge services organisation around operationalisation of open
source in enterprise
23. Example: O'Reilly and Associates
• 1993: Began publishing books on open source (Perl, system
administration)
• 1999: Began running OSCON, the Open Source Convention
• Leading technical editor, event organiser
24. Example: Google
• Uses open source to run core business (advertising, search)
• Android – open source mobile platform – disrupted mobile OS market
(Symbian dominated) by enabling OEMs to modify core platform
• Built on open source Java platform
25. Remember: There is no open
source business model
Only people using open source as a development and/or
distribution model, and leveraging that market to sell
complementary goods
26. Thank you!
Image credit: opensource.com
Dave Neary <dneary@redhat.com>
SDN/NFV Community Strategy