Spent most of this morning catching up with Open Source developments. More money are obviously being poured into Open Source. News.com has an article on this more than a month ago. Commented time and again, open source is still searching for business model.
Coming up with an open source application is getting more difficult in each and every application category. Most major categories already has one or two "category killer app": operating system - Linux, BSD variants; webserver - Apache; web browser - Firefox; database - mySQL, postgreSQL; office suite - Open Office; the list goes on.
Notice that non of these "killers" are company (with exception of mySQL). Apache, Open Office, Mozilla operates under some form of foundation. Mozilla had went commercial though. Most of these "killer" projects are supported by mammoths like IBM, HP, Sun, even Google, contributing resources into fundamental development which greatly benefits their other commercial activities at the higher end.
Foundational opensource projects such as these will keep on improving and the foundation thicken.
In thinking about it I came up with the Open Source Maturity Model. This model can applies to a single open source project or the whole open source macrocosm.
Foundational
This is what had been built, providing a firm ground for growth. Thus Linux provides the operating system, Apache provides the webserver function.
Works are done here to consolidate and stablize functions, improve usability.
As the Foundational frontial pushes forward, developing functions became stable and people/company/government start jumping on to use Open Source.
Many ad-hoc personal or even corporate participation occurs in this level. The motivation is generally not to create a business model out of it. It can be viewed as patching leaks here and there in the foundation.
While venture capital may not be interested here, enterprising companies could start a thriving business supporting other businesses that are getting getting on.
Cutting edge
This is where much of the buzz, expectations, hopes and hypes are generated. It represent some form of the "future".
For many companies and individual, this is exciting and represents opportunity to direct the future. For those waiting to jump on to open source, it represents uncertainties. A lot of technologies that were expected to be killer, fizzled out.
Most of the time the cutting-edge is dominated by big corporates or academic research.
Transitional
This is the "now" in open source maturity. Things are happening but the dust has not settled - like "Will the OpenDocument standard be widely accepted?", "Will Ruby on Rails trump PHP and Java?"
Many big corporations support work in this transitional stage for a number of reasons.
- It could potential direct development in their favour.
- It link up the foundational functions to high-value services near the cutting-edge.
- Entity looking to get on to Open Source are taking cue from what the "technology leaders" are doing.
Venture capital typically invest in companies near the frontier of this stage. Projects or services that are gaining momentum or going to fill anticipated needs.
The transitional frontial is ever moving forward. This means that invested companies probably had started at or nearer to the cutting-edge. To win, it is important here to consoldidate and become foundational, be the only one or two left standing when the dust settles.
What do I see from this?
- Major categories had all but disappeared.
- Most ideas will tend towards the niche.
- As an open source category matures, the emerging winner will take majority of the share.
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