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Do Open Source Companies *Really* Support Free Software?
March 31, 2009
Posted by: Glyn Moody
Asterisk, a PBX, telephony engine, and telephony applications toolkit, is one of open source best-kept secrets. As with many open source projects, there is a company that has been set up to provide support, Digium.
Here's its latest press release:
Digium, Inc., the Asterisk Company, today announced the general availability of support subscriptions for open source Asterisk. The software, which Digium’s founder and chief technology officer, Mark Spencer, created and released under the open source GNU General Public License (GPL) 10 years ago, is now the world’s most pervasive open source telephony platform.
The new Asterisk support services allow organizations of any size to leverage the power of open source Asterisk with the confidence that their system is supported by a world-class support organization. The support subscriptions provide technical support, hardware replacements and substantial discounts on training programs to enable users to take full advantage of the power of the Asterisk platform.
Well, so what? you may well ask. An open source company is offering support for free software: isn't that what nearly all open source companies do?
Well, no.
There's a subtlety here that's worth underlining. As the press release goes on to explain:
“Digium’s new subscription services give Asterisk users the best of both worlds—they can download and use Asterisk free of charge, as always, and now they can also call on Digium for technical support when needed,” said Spencer. “We think the combo of free and open, with support, is going to appeal to many of our most technical users. The Asterisk community has long been a source of great expertise through online forums, and now we’re supplementing that with the ability to call us, 24x7, for access to our Asterisk experts.”
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About the author
Glyn Moody Glyn Moody's look at all levels of the enterprise open source stack. The blog will look at the organisations that are embracing open source, old and new alike (start-ups welcome), and the communities of users and developers that have formed around them (or not, as the case may be).
Comments received
Geoff said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009
But a lot of open source companies 'fix' free community efforts during their commercial code branching. It's common to address the issues with a framework publicly in order to raise the quality for your commercial plugin for instance.
Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009
That's true, although it's obviously in their own interests to have solid code.
An open source observer said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009
I think you are missing out on how Red Hat does this. Fedora is a project vital to the success of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The value an RHEL subscription brings is all the testing, hardware and software vendor certification - which take time - that cannot reasonably be done with Fedora with it's 6 month lifecycles. Once the RHEL code based is locked down and tested, Red Hat is able to give 7 years of support for the platform. IMHO, this is a very viable open source business model, and I am sure Red Hat will become the billion dollar open source company in the next two years (they closed at US$670m last financial year).
Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009
My understanding is that much of that money comes from JBoss, not RHEL...
MyLinuxSupport.com said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009
A big benefit of open source is that the source is that it is much easier for 3rd parties to support. The source code is readily available and contracts do not need to be signed to get access to proprietary source code necessary to provide support. In addition, 3rd parties can easily patch software when necessary. Last, 3rd parties can extend "community" editions of open source software to add functionality required by the markets. 3rd parties are no longer at a disadvantage compared to software brands when it comes to providing support.
MyLinuxSupport.com said on Tuesday, 31 March 2009
A big benefit of open source is that it is much easier for 3rd parties to support. The source code is readily available and contracts do not need to be signed to get access to proprietary source code necessary to provide support. In addition, 3rd parties can easily patch software when necessary. Last, 3rd parties can extend "community" editions of open source software to add functionality required by the markets. 3rd parties are no longer at a disadvantage compared to software brands when it comes to providing support.
The Contrarian said on Wednesday, 01 April 2009
Hey, open source observer. That's exactly the problem. People who start using Fedora have to re-engineer if they want to use RHEL becuase Red Hat doesn't provide any form of support for Fedora. Far better to use Ubuntu, which is always free and always supportable. Which is why everyone I speak to who is starting out fresh is doing just that...
Mark Harris said on Saturday, 04 April 2009
I think you're focussing on free/gratis, rather than considering free/libre. Releasing open source doesn't put a requirement on you to not make money. However, I agree that it's a little silly for vendors to not suport their community editions (as they can make money that way), because they may miss the opportunity to convert those users to the commercial edition if their need becomes stong enough.
Glyn Moody said on Sunday, 05 April 2009
@Mark: I'm certainly not suggesting that they *musn't* make money, just that they shouldn't put it above all else - including nurturing the community editions and their users.
Mark Harris said on Tuesday, 07 April 2009
I still think you're focusing on the wrong aspect. Let's look at Alfresco. It's a commercial company, it makes very clever enterprise class content management software, which is sells, along with support. And they release it free of charge to anyone who wants to use it. And they release the source, so you can write your own modules, if you have the nous. So I can get an ECM at a fraction of the cost that Documentum would incur and, if I want to pay a bit more, I can get it supported by the company. That's my choice. Or I can rely on the community to help me through problems. Isn't that what open source is all about? Choice, and access to the source? If you're going to try a new definition of "open source" [#stallman ;-)] , go for it, but I don't see how you can criticize a company for following the open source ethos.
vineet dahiya said on Thursday, 09 April 2009
You have hit the nail Glyn......support of open source 'products & solutions' not only by the open source sponsorer but also by open source System Integrator is not happening. Open Source SI stay away from supporting the open source versions and either themselves (or forced by project sponsorer)tend to push commercial version of OSS.
This is 'Open Source Enterprise Trap'.....I have recently blogged about it http://blog.infoaxon.com/blog/
We are India's First Open Source Integration company and 'preserving customer's freedom of Choice' is what we never compromise. Most of our production grade open source solutions implementations are 'community open source stacks' which we are also supporting and enhancing.
Thanks
Vineet Dahiya
Web: www.infoaxon.com
Blog: http://blog.infoaxon.com/blog/
James Dixon said on Thursday, 09 April 2009
Take a look at the latest version of the beekeeper model as it touches on this topic - http://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/new-version-of-the-beekeeper-model-for-commercial-open-source
In the single-vendor model the organization responsible for creating the project (MySQL, Alfresco, Pentaho, SugarCRM, etc) has upfront costs that run into millions. These companies take years to get to a cash-flow neutral position. They are not 'feeding off' open source, they are trying to recoup the huge investment they have made. Offering support for the open source code can cannibalize sales of the enterprise edition.
The issue is sustainability. If the company providing most of the resources and writing most of the software cannot sustain itself, they will disappear and the community are left in a bad situation.
I wish Digium luck. However Alfresco tried a similar (but not identical) strategy in March 2007, but have just announced they are switching back to the Enterprise Edition mo
Arthur Marsh said on Saturday, 25 April 2009
Hi, when you said:
'I think the root of the problem is that people are still hankering after the mythical “billion dollar” open source company – seeing it as a kind of proof that free software “works” as a business model.'
You better described what I keep hearing in the local media as 'wanting to be the next Bill Gates'.