I just finished listening to Marten Mickos at PARC Forum on open source businesses. Below please find my list of key statements from this talk. Most are well-known, some remain controversial, however, as a researcher it is good to be able to pinpoint such statements.
- “Best way to serve open source is to make a ton of money on it.” @ 2:09min.
- “Open source is not a business model.” @ 6:13min.
- “Open source is a production and a distribution model.” @ 6:29min.
- “Open source is built on […] people serving their own needs […]” @ 9:24min.
- “[…] the engineering cost […] is as high as for closed source companies […] but you get much higher quality software much sooner.” @ 10:39min.
- “Marketing costs are significantly lower and go-to-market is significantly faster.” @ 11:20min.
- “Sales: there isn’t much of a difference.” @ 11:35min.
- “Some people spend time to save money, some spend money to save time.” @ 16:48min.
- “You get no benefit from open source if there is no community around it.” @ 20:20min.
- “How much [code] contributions do you get? […] that’s irrelevant.” @ 20:40min.
- “The biggest competitor to us was our own open source version.” @ 30:40min.
- “[Open source companies …] have massive amounts of intellectual property, not just in the code they have.” @ 39:06min.
While Marten touches on “civic benefits” at times, this talk is mostly a condensed review of commercial open source and a good reference from one of its foremost practitioners.
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