By Jitendra Gupta on AnalysisWritten by Jitendra Gupta of Karmaweb

In the area of computers and Internet, the open source movement is almost as old as computers themselves. In the beginning there was Multics, Unix, BSD, Minix etc. Than came Richard Stallman’s GPL, GNU and FSF. That was followed by Linux, Apache and many more projects. Over time, the open source movement has begun extending to things beyond software and technology - to include media (video, pics and blogs etc.), creative content (creative commons) and communities.

Since the open source movement affects our lives in more and more ways, let’s take a look at how the open source model is interacting with our market driven economic system.

Open Source Business Models

The heightened level of interest in the open source model has lead companies to start looking for ways to add value to the process of open source development and distribution, in order to make money from it. Some of the models/approaches that have emerged are:

Develop the product and open it up to the community: The main goals for the business here are twofold:

• Generate marketing buzz
• Leverage the skills of people in the community to enhance the product.

Businesses make money by selling add-on software modules or services to customers using open source technology. Some of the examples of this model are Eclipse (IBM), Netscape, Linux, and recently Solaris (Sun). While this model sounds attractive as a way to reduce development costs, there are plenty of other expenses. Businesses need to create and participate in boards (sometime controlled by the business, sometimes not) to chart a sensible product direction, to manage licensing issues and to put together a well tested base distribution bundle. Working on a board staffed with community members and sometimes even competitors can be an expensive and time consuming process.

Take an Open Source product and provide support and services to enterprises: There are a number of companies like MySQL, Zmanda, RedHat etc. that provide such services. The business model is all about building up the volume and driving up the percentage of paying customers (typically less than 2% of the customers pay) for customer support or other services.

Provide open source platforms: There are a number of sites/projects like sourceforge.net, Google Code and even YouTube or FaceBook, that provide platforms for open source-like collaboration. The business model typically is to provide the basic services for free and make money via ads by driving page views.

The value of open source is pretty clear to customers, as they get the products and services they want without having to pay for the underlying product…But who else is extracting rents in open source related economic activity? Let’s look at the value accruing to three important stakeholders - Businesses, Customers and Contributors.

Value to open source businesses

Some have argued that businesses are capturing the lion’s share of the value of open source, at the expense of contributors and customers. This point of view was expressed by Dirk Riehle (who leads the open source research group at SAP Research) in his recent paper on the topic. Dirk argued that businesses derive the maximum benefit because:

• The customers want a deployed solution, so service companies (like IBM) that use open source software make up for the free open source software by increasing the price of the service. This increase directly adds to their bottom line.
• Businesses benefit as employers, because a larger talent pool due to the non-proprietary nature of open source enables businesses to have a stronger negotiating position, compared to individual developers.

Besides the obvious conflict on interests (Dirk works for SAP, which isn’t big on open source; and SAP competes with IBM, which is big on open source), Dirk made the first point without pointing to any data. I find it hard to believe that customers don’t see a lowered bill when open source software is used instead of proprietary software.

For his point #2, Dirk again provided no facts - but makes a general assertion. I believe that the people who contribute to open source are self motivated people who enjoy programming and as such get a higher salary, compared to people who do not participate in open source.

Also from the open source business point of view, if we consider the costs associated with managing, engaging and participating with the community, I am not sure the open source businesses will come out with lower costs, compared to non-open source businesses.

Overall it seems to me that open source businesses have significant costs and barriers to profitability; and are certainly not capturing the majority of value in open source transactions.

Value to Customers

Customers using open source benefit a great deal:

• Free software makes it easy to get started.
• Using open source enables customers to avoid the dreaded vendor lock-in. So if customers are using open source, they are able to change providers if they are not particularly happy with the service provided by the vendor. Open source provides them with huge leverage with service providers.
• The customers benefit as they have a larger talent pool to hire from and they don’t have to pay proprietary vendors for all sorts of “certifications” etc.

Overall the customers come out well ahead by using open source technology. In fact, were it not for the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and Php, Python, Perl etc.) stack, startup costs would have been a lot higher then they are today - and we would not be seeing the amount of innovation we are seeing in the field of Internet and Technology.

Value to Contributors

Contributors to open source also benefit from participating:

• It used to be the case that contributors did not get paid for their contributions and had to work on their own time, but things are changing. With the popularity of open source projects, more companies are paying contributors to support the community, or are even contributing proprietary modules to the community. This provides direct incentives to contributors to work with the community.
• Open source participation is a great way to establish credibility if you are a programmer…Have you seen ads like these: “With your resume, please include some php and javascript code snippets or refer us to an open source project you’ve worked on.”
• Most good open source developers have an opportunity to become a public voice for the project. This extended role for engineers not only means an ego boost, but also translates to higher salaries etc.

Overall, developers working on open source come out ahead by participating in open source projects.

Conclusion

The open source movement has become a powerful value creator. In addition, it has created an interesting and somewhat egalitarian wealth distribution mechanism, where on one hand it has made it hard for one stakeholder to extract inordinate rents, and on the other hand it has created the right incentives for a lot of people to participate and have a stake in its success. No wonder it is becoming a popular model for more and businesses and social activities.

分析：开源经济促进Web2.0创新
2007/06/12　新浪科技
　　

　　导读：国外媒体6月10日刊登了分析文章指出，随着开放源代码运动对日常生活的影响日益显著，此种经济模式已成为推动Web 2.0技术创新的重要动力。

　　开放源代码历程几乎与计算机发展史一样久远，早期产品如Multics、Unix、BSD和Minix，随后又有GPL、GNU和FSF等，再后来是Linux、Apache及其他产品。随着时间的推移，开放源代码运动的影响也不仅仅局限于软件和技术层面，同时也向媒体（视频、图像和博客等）、内容及社区等领域拓展。

　　开放源代码商业模式

　　过去数年中，一些企业已开始注意到开放源代码产品开发和发布过程中的增值服务，并由此而探索出一些盈利之道，其中一条是开发出产品并向社区开放，其主要目的有两点：1） 进行一般性市场营销；2）促使开放源代码社区中的技术人员提高既有产品质量。利用开放源代码技术，科技企业通过向客户销售增值软件或服务以实现盈利，如Eclipse（IBM）、 Netscape、Linux及Solaris等产品便是如此。

　　虽然这种方式有利于各科技企业降低开发成本，但这些企业也需为此投入其他开支，如确定产品开发方向、授权协议以及对分包软件进行集中测试等，同时还需协调与社区开发人员甚至是竞争对手之间的关系。另一条模式是提供开放源代码平台，如谷歌、YouTube和Facebook等提供的相应网站/项目平台，即向外部开发者提供类似开放源代码性质的协作平台。这种商业模式的盈利之道通常为：提供免费基础服务，然后借助网站流量提升来获取广告收入。

　　开放源代码的商业价值

　　一些人士认为，在开放源代码经济活动中，从企业、客户和软件开发人员三方看，企业受益最多，原因有二：1）客户需要获得解决方案，科技企业利用开放源代码软件来提高服务价格；2）与单一软件开发者相比，科技企业可接触大量开放源代码社区开发人士并扮演雇主角色，从而在商业谈判中占据更多优势。

　　开放源代码对客户的价值

　　客户可从开放源代码产品获得以下实惠：1） 免费软件可使实施新计划更为容易；2） 可中途更换软件提供商及服务商；3）可雇用大量开发人员而不必向专利软件销售商支付授权费用。事实上，如果没有开放源代码产品，大量创业公司的运营成本就会比目前高出很多，而各种互联网及新技术其他新发明的数量则将随之减少。

　　开放源代码对软件开发者的价值

　　开放源代码软件开发人员也可因参与开发而获益：1）由于开放源代码产品的日益流行，一些企业开始聘用开放源代码软件开发者来支持社区，从而提高了开发者的积极性；2）参与开放源代码项目开发有利需建立和提高开发者本人的诚信度；3） 绝大多数开放源代码开发者有机会成为项目开发的公众代言人。

　　结论：开放源代码运动已成为强有力的价格创造者。不仅如此，它还开创了新型财富分配方式。一方面，开放源代码使得单一投资人很难独享开发利益；另一方面，它又能刺激大量人员参与其中并分享成果。正因为如此，开放源代码运动正演变流行的商业模式和社会活动。

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