professional open source
TRANSCRIPT
an introduction to
Professional Open Source
Techfest 2009 – IIT BombaySebastiaan Deckers
Mumbai, January 25, 2009
Who am I?
• Open source developer• Founder of Pandion instant
messenger– XMPP client for Windows– Open source, open standards– Several million users
• Working at Directi on Chat.pw– Based on Pandion
History of FOSS
• Started in 1980’s with GNU, FSF• Linux started 1991, BSD released 1993• Turned professional since late 1990’s
• Explosive growth:• 160,000+ projects on SourceForge.net[1]
• 100+ million domains using open source web servers[2]
• 440+ million people using open source browsers[3,4]
1 http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=182 http://news.netcraft.com/3 http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0&qpmr=15&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qpcal=1&qptimeframe=Q&qpsp=394 http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
FOSS at Directi
• Heavy use of open source applications, servers, libraries, languages, frameworks, and other tools in all activities of the company.
• Contributions to open source projects:– DNS: PowerDNS– Email: Dovecot– Instant messaging: Tigase– …
The Cost of Proprietary Software
• The global loss due to proprietary software is “in excess of $1 trillion a year”[1,2]
1 http://www.opensource.org/node/364
2 http://people.redhat.com/tiemann/STS-Forum-Tiemann-2006.pdf
Financial Benefits of FOSS
ImplicationAdvantage
open standards for data and communication, no vendor lock-in, more competition, lower prices
Commoditisation of software
Larger, economical pool of technology specialists
Accessible code for maintenance, integration
•Lower per-unit cost•Lower investment
No license fees
Quality Benefits of FOSS
• Transparent development process
• Hyper-competitive development community: zero barrier to market entry, forking of projects
• Open standards and formats
• User community: pooled risk of abandonware, lower training costs, knowledge sharing
Stages of FOSS Adoption
1. Proprietary monoculture :-(
2. Using open tools: Firefox, OpenOffice.org
3. Making internal customisations
4. Creating products and services using FOSS platforms and languages
5. Contributing to the FOSS community
6. Building Free Software products
How do I make money if I can't sell my software?
• Unfortunately …– Begging for donations is not a business model– Don't count on making money from licensing
• But …– FOSS encourages adoption of your software
• Liberated software: Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Qt Library, Movable Type, Java, …
• So …
Successful FOSS Business Models
Proprietary add-ons: Zimbra
Dual licensing: MySQL
Professional services, maintenance, support:
RedHat Inc, IBM Corp
Enhancing a “complementary” product or service:• Hardware: e.g. Intel, Apple• Hosting: e.g. Apache• Content: e.g. Google• …
Dependence on Intellectual Property
more
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EOF
Questions?
Contact Me
http://blog.pandion.be/
Shameless Plugs
http://www.pandion.be/
http://twitter.com/pandion
Thank you for your time!