Nuggets of news from the open source world
October 9th, 2008 | Published in Open Source
- This is old-ish news, but the acquisition of companies behind open source software by big behemoths continues with the acquisition of Jabber by Cisco.
- Matt Asay makes some interesting points about the fact that proprietary vendors spend time and effort protecting their investments in their proprietary tools, rather than focusing effort on looking toward the future. He says: “Red Hat and other open-source companies, in other words, are focused on the future, because that’s what their model requires in order to earn renewals from customers. The proprietary model is more about “build once, charge everywhere…and as long as you can.” It’s a great model for the vendor, when it works, but it encourages stasis in markets and silly lawsuits designed to horde, not grow customer value.” At this point, proprietary vendors in our nonprofit neck of the woods aren’t spending time litigating (thankfully) but I’d argue that for a while, at least, stasis in markets was most definitely encouraged. Things might be shifting, though, due to both open source and SaaS as catalysts for change.
- Some folks think that the more users an open source project has, the better, and the healthier the ecosystem. I agree, and I think that bodes well for us as more and more open source software is adopted in the sector (like CiviCRM, for example.)
- It doesn’t have to be SaaS vs. Open Source, it can be SaaS and Open Source. SugarCRM is moving forward in that direction, which is cool. Too bad CivicSpace OnDemand is dead - could have been an an avenue for CiviCRM.
