Find an Enterprise Software Alternative

Find an Enterprise Software Alternative, by Rachael King

Open Source: The Model Is Broken

BusinessWeek says "The open-source business model that relies solely on support and service revenue streams is failing to meet the expectations of investors" in the article called Open Source: The Model Is Broken

The author takes a cost sharing perspective on open source. What is common to all companies should go open source and then each company needs to provide add-on value (of some sort) and make money out of this value add. What "value add" is seen as inventions or new business models.

Why open source software?

Sometimes I meet people who ask "why do people give away their software for free?" Obviously it is good for users to get what they need without paying anything, but why do anyone want to put a lot of effort into something they give away for free? I believe there are three reasons for open sourcing your software.

Ideological reasons. Some people think that software should be free as a principle, to the best for mankind. The open source movement - http://www.opensource.org/ - tends to take this perspective.

Reduce costs. Organizations and individuals realize that will be cheaper to share development costs with others with common needs or interests. In the case of commercial companies they are interested in sharing costs on software viewed as not creating a differentiation (or competitive advantage) to the business. Apache projects - and in particular the Apache web server - are good examples of this strategy. Nowadays, no company or business believe that they will more successful because they have a better web-server.

Generate revenue. Organizations or individuals who wants to create an extreme volume and visibility for their product and as a "side effect" of the visibility generate revenue, e.g. by advertising or sponsorship like Mozilla gets money from Google, or by converting some of the users to paying customers by selling services and add-ons like RedHat and MySQL.

MySQL Server 5.1 released yesterday!

Sun Microsystems released MySQL Server 5.1.30 GA, the first 5.1 production version of the popular open source database. You can download and use it for free.

MySQL is an open source project where people are encouraged to Contribute. MySQL is in the core of the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache web server, MySQL, and PHP), it has a GPL license, and is extremely popular with about 60000 downloads a day.

MySQL is also a supported product from Sun Microsystems, paying customers will get access to support and additional tools like the new query analyzer. For example you can go to shop.mysql.com and buy "MySQL Enterprise Basic" for USD 599 and this includes MySQL Enterprise Server, MySQL Enterprise Monitor, and Production Support.

Norwegian readers can look at coverage at digi.no Største MySQL-oppdatering på tre år

OpenOffice in the Norwegian public administration

The Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reports (La Norvegia verso il software libero) that the Norwegian Government is embracing OpenOffice, the open source counterpart to Microsoft's Office suite. The article says that the Norwegian government will no longer buy Office from Microsoft, but switch to OpenOffice. The initiative has been funded by 225000 Euro.

However, this is probably no exactly what the Norwegian government have done. According to Dagens IT and the translation provided by LinuxBSDos, "Minister Heidi Grande Røys allocate two million to the development of solutions to adapt public agencies Functionality specific solutions and archives to OpenOffice, a free alternative to office software as Microsoft Office." The funding of 2 million NOK will be administered by Friprog and allocated to several OpenOffice adoption projects.

This news have generated a lot of headlines all over the world, for example in New Zeland Herald and San Francisco Chronicle

LinuxBSDos wraps it up by saying "Minister Heidi Grande Røys (pictured above) is a very smart Minister and she’s good looking, too. Please send a bunch of flowers to the Norwegian embassy in your country with her name attached to it. Tell them why you are sending it."

Independent advice: Norway's Friprog competence centre

From Independent advice: Norway's Friprog competence centre: "Friprog is the Norwegian competence centre for free and open source software. Set up as an independent advisory body and financed by the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform, Friprog provides advice on the use of open source software to public bodies and private companies. It also helps to shape Norway's policies towards free software. The centre was built in close cooperation with similar projects in other Scandinavian countries."

Friprog has decided to be user focused rather than developer focused. Friprog manages a software
repository delingsbazaren.no, which is a platform for sharing and re-using code for the public sector.

See also Friprog and Government Open Source Software Resource Center (GOV-OSS-RC)

Delingsbazaren.no is implemented by an open source consultancy company called FreeCode.

Is Open Source Software a Race To Zero?

En viktig forretningsmodell rundt åpen kildekode er å tilby merverdi i form andre programvareprodukter som brukeren kan kjøpe (og som ikke tilbys som åpen kildekode). Poenget som startet denne tråden på Slashdot er at produktene som tilbys som merverdi ofte får konkurrenter som er basert på åpen kildekode, noe som fører til at merverdien forsvinner over tid. Svarene går i retning av at "ja, det er slik" og at man derfor må fortsette å tilføre ny interessant merverdi for å overleve.

For egen regning: Megatrenden i dette er nok at all programvare vil bli gratis en gang i fremtiden, iallefall for denne typen programvare.