Tag: Evergreen
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Control points and steering mechanisms in open-source software projects
Following up on my Lisog talk earlier this month, I was asked to write up the talk’s content. So here we go, my analysis of what commercial open source firms do to manage or steer open source projects they depend on. Abstract: Most commercial software today depends on open source software. The commercial software might…
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Community open source as the raw material of computing utility providers
It’s April 2nd, so the Apache Software Foundation’s 2010 April Fools’ joke is over. Here is why I liked it a lot. It represents a hypothetical: What if the ASF and its projects could be bought? Or, if not bought, then put under control or strong influence of corporate interests like in traditional open source…
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Three areas of open source economics
These days, I get involved in a lot of discussions about open source economics. Usually, they lead to an invitation to present our research and clarify “how open source works” to the audience. I’ve found it helpful to distinguish these three rather different areas of open source economics: (1) direct profits, (2) public welfare, (3)…
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Open source vendor lock-in
Yesterday, SAP’s CTO Vishal Sikka called for a more open approach to the Java standardization process (JCP), asking SUN to stop ruling it with a heavy hand. Not surprisingly, he got some pushback using the argument that SAP isn’t one to talk about being more open, given its slow involvement with open source. I don’t…
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The intellectual property rights imperative of single-vendor open source
I guess everybody knows it but nobody ever named it, as far as I know, so I’m doing it here: The Intellectual Property Rights Imperative of Single-Vendor Commercial Open Source Always act in such a way that you, and only you, possess the right to provide the open source project under a license of your…
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Every license has its time and place
You may have noticed the recent discussion about which open source license a single-vendor commercial open source firm should choose for its community offering. In this blog post I’ll argue that this choice depends on the state and speed of the firm.