Open Source 2.0
Posted by Ian Holsman
With the current trend of companies releasing the products for free and calling them ‘open source’ I think it time that we start differentiating what exactly the different type of open sources offerings there are.
I see 2 different types:
- open source 1.0 and
- open source 2.0
The difference is who participates in the development of it, and how many different companies make up the development community.
The easiest way to determine this is to ask what if a single Company ‘X’ went out of business (bought out, chapter 11, etc), and the people being paid by them stopped working on the project, what would happen?
For open source 1.0, the answer is usually something along the lines of: it’ll hurt, but we’ll survive.
With some of the new ‘open source’ companies announced over the last 2 years, the answer would be closure.
Sure the source is open, but it would be like getting shot in the chest.. Only a few like Vista get reincarnated into a ‘open source 1.0’ project.
My fear, is that the open source brand and what it stands for is getting muddied and corrupted as more ‘2.0’ products get released out into the wild, and think that the open source 1.0 should rebrand them selves with another moniker now so as the user base can easily differentiate between a sustainable project with multiple suppliers available to service their needs, and a one supplier model where they are dependant on the whims of a single entity.
And if you are a 2.0 CEO reading this, my message to you is set your product free.
Open up the decision making in your project. Foster multiple companies to support your product, make it so that your company is not the centre of the products universe. By doing this you will get innovation and stability in your offering, and you will grow the pie , similar to how you get VC funding instead of just using your own cash. It will take your product (and you) onto the next level (ubiquity).
I dont disagree; I also think that the 1.0 model is the one that reaps the benefit of shared engineering costs. The 2.0 model is still single-company development. As such, I wouldnt call it OSS2.0; i’d called it “shared source” to make it clear that control is still effectively kept in a company.