Investing in Open-Source Software
By glazou on Thursday 28 April 2005, 09:47 - Disruptive Innovations - Permalink
I find his article weird. Really weird. So JBoss has 2 million downloads of their software created by 110 employees and a positive cash flow? Wow. These are impressive figures, hum hum. Their investors should come and visit Disruptive Innovations. Still 100% self-funded, 2 persons, profitable since its first day of activity, and about 2 million downloads too. Don't misunderstand me, I am not trying to compare myself or my company with others. I am just saying that investors saw collapse most of the projects they invested into because they know about nothing about this industry and have no vision. I still remember the VCs and incubators here in Paris. Crazy. If you read the available litterature as of today, the most common opinion is that an OSS company can make money only from two sources (services/support and/or a commercial version of the free product) and can hardly invest in R&D. There's a third way, and Mozilla is the perfect fit for that third way. More about this later, I have to leave for my mother's funerals.
Comments
> More about this later, I have to leave for my mother's funerals.
I'm amazed that you took time to post about OSS projects in that case, perhaps it's a bit of a diversion, my sympathies ...
But where does the income from DI come from ?
From the contract with Linspire ?
I think there are two kind of business models :
- be a 'normal' 'customers-pay-for-it' company
- be a development house for big companies, which need a piece of sotware to fit their strategies. ( like providing an alternative to FrontPage, as a selling point )
Being an independant company and being a 'symbiotic' one is a vastly different matter.
I think jBoss and DI ( or Mozilla ) are in 2 difrferent categories.
--b
There's another point, Bart. Selling something to business, or selling to end users. Business has money, end users don't.
2 millions download means little. Who does the download, and how money do they have to spend on what they aim to do with the software they download is what counts.
Also, I wouldn't be surprise if most of the 110 employee were doing development for people who use JBoss, and only a few developing JBoss.
If DI started to sell manpower to create web sites using NVu, you could imagine it would grow easily.
> they know about nothing about this industry and have no vision
It's exactly how i feel since a few days. It's been 4 months since i'm trying to start my own linux desktop services company in Lille. I realised recently that i wasted about 3 months with a so-called high tech incubator, wasting time writing multiple business plans because they were not convinced that i and the market was ready.
Right now i have two clients working as an independant, i think the market is obviously ready but not the incubator mindset.
Bart, DI's income come from various sources, *of course* not only Linspire. We also have our own home-made self-funded projects. I disagree with that "symbiotic" qualification.
Im looking foward on more of this topic. I found very interesting what Daniel has brought about this OSS article. Greetings from Puerto Rico.