
#Cloud money ventures software
The one-day Open Source Forum was hosted by the Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering in Potsdam, together with IBM and Deutsche Telekom. Community recognition is a huge motivating factor industry won't be able to choke this." "Many of them want peer group recognition, which the open-source community provides. "Engineers aren't always after money," Jollans said. Money talks, conceded Adam Jollans, open-source software strategy manager at IBM, but the good thing is, not all developers are listening. The fifth question that Davidson posed - Can startups keep the open-source spirit alive while striving to make money? - drew an answer from IBM, one of the world's largest IT companies and also a major contributor to the open-source community. "This is a debate we're having constantly in our company," he said. That's why many startups choose to combine open-source software with proprietary software, and then carve out their niche, for instance by targeting smaller companies with a less complex and costly product, as JasperSoft is doing with its open-source business intelligence software, Wight said.īut the mix of open-source and in-house proprietary software also raises the issue of how open a company that labels itself open source really is, according to Charles Nicholls, founder and chief executive officer of business intelligence vendor SeeWhy Software. "There is always a risk of people seeing what you're doing and copying some of ideas," he said.
#Cloud money ventures code
Product differentiation is always a challenge but particularly so in the open-source community where most or all of the code is accessible to everyone, according to Wight. "With the commercial product, we have a dual-license revenue mode."ĭavidson's fourth question was marketing driven: Can startups differentiate their products, especially from proprietary software? "With the community product, we're not only giving something back to the open-source community but also giving potential customers an opportunity to try our software with no strings attached," Wight said.

Like many open-source startups, JasperSoft offers a "community" product, which is free, and a commercial "pro" offering.

"I can't speak for Europe but in Silicon Valley, if you don't have a commercial open-source strategy, you don't have much of a chance with venture capitalists," he said. It's tough when the product is essentially free, acknowledged Wight. 56 minutes ago &0183 &32 Far from conducting layoffs, the 700-person startup announced in February a 300 million funding round at a 10 billion valuation. Speaking about business models, that was Davidson's third question: Can startups show a valid business case? This is the type of developer who, if ignored, could trip up a great business model, Kreutzer said. Till Kreutzer, a lawyer at the Office for Information Law and Expertise who specializes in open-source copyrights and licensing, pointed to a German developer with three patents for open-source code embedded in numerous routing products who has successfully won patent infringement lawsuits in court.
