As a follow up on my post about InfoWorld’s recent article Open source lessons from the French, I wanted to react to this post by Matt Asay. Matt debates with a dilemna: shoud governments fund open source, or not? His (rightful) conclusion is that it’s not governments role to do so. But then, who should?
Well, Matt, you actually provide the answers to your question. Open source does not need to be funded by a government. Open source funds itself, on the free market. What a government (or a political system, for that matters) can do, and should do, is provide an environment in which the entrepreneurial spirit, the community spirit, and the open source spirit, can thrive.
The French government is doing a great job at promoting open source among its rising generations. At Talend, we employ a group of young energetic engineers who joined us with a mind shaped by years of using open source in their schools. And every summer, several interns join this team, and actually fight for the few positions we offer, proving that open source is a vivid concept in our engineering schools (in France, universities are state-run, and most private “grandes ecoles” are either directly or indirectly funded by the government or a major state-owned corporation - hence the goverment’s “responsibility” in the process).
But, to quote Bertrand in the InfoWorld article: “All students in France use open source,†says Bertrand Diard, CEO and co-founder of Talend, a French pioneer of open source data integration software. “A lot of universities in the U.S., except probably MIT, use traditional tools like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.â€
Conversely, French schools are not good at promoting the entrepreneurial spirit. Hence, France produces great engineers, heads of development, CTOs (all of them are in great demand in the Silicon Valley) but few entrepreneurs (of course Bertrand and Fabrice, Talend’s co-founders, are the exception!). Too few French schools have incubators, VC connections, licensing offices… the spirit is not there. No Sand Hill Road near Ecole Polytechnique or Supelec (sorry, I had to mention my Alma Mater, even though it did not teach me a lot about business) in France - this is not Stanford.
So where does that lead us? To leverage the best of both worlds. Inject more open source in US schools. Inject more entrepreneur spirit in French schools. Then replicate the model in other countries. Easy, no?
Yves
My friend Andrew Lampitt of Jaspersoft crafted a new term that I think makes a lot of sense for the commercial open source business model that vendors like Talend, Jaspersoft and several other embody.
In his post, Open-Core Licensing (OCL): Is this Version of the Dual License Open Source Business Model the New Standard?, Andrew addresses many valid reasons for adopting this term - the most important of all, I believe, being that the dual licensing term many vendors are using is both ambiguous and emotionally charged. Ambiguous (but not in a malicious way!), because Open-Core Licensing goes beyond granting different licenses (GPL and commercial) for the same source code depending on whether or not it is embedded in commercial software. Emotionally charged - well, just look back at the controversy that arose from Marten Mickos’ announcements at the MySQL Conference, back in April.
Matt Aslett from The 451 Group has been calling this approach the Split Licensing approach. I prefer the Open-Core Licensing term - and so does Matt, apparently.
To summarize how Andrew defines Open-Core Licensing: there is a “core” open source product that is GPL, and there is also additional high-value available as add-on features for purchase.
Andrew goes further by describing the associated business model:
So I propose the following for the OCL business model:
- core is GPL: if you embed the GPL in closed source, you pay a fee
- technical support of GPL product may be offered for a fee (up for debate as to whether it must be offered)
- annual commercial subscription includes: indemnity, technical support, and additional features and/or platform support. (Additional commercial features having viewable or closed source, becoming GPL after timebomb period are both up for debate).
- professional services and training are for a fee
Sounds familiar? This is the description of Talend’s business model (services & support on the GPL products, subscription licenses of the enterprise product, and OEM commercial licenses for closed-source vendors who want to embed our technology). But this is also a description of Jaspersoft’s business model (no surprise here), and of SugarCRM’s, and of Zimbra’s, and even maybe of MySQL’s…
I suspect this OCL concept is going to stir more discussion, that will lead to refining the model even further, and also heated debates on several of the issues addressed here. But positive criticism is good, and helps us move forward.
Anyway, thanks Andrew for crafting this term and opening up the debate.
Yves
Dennis Howlett recently wrote an aggressive post in his Irregular Enterprise blog. According to him, the traditional software maintenance pricing model is dead. Dennis is convinced that enterprises are rejecting this pricing model when they realize the incredibly high profit margins of proprietary software vendors. Their operational margin is often close to 30%, and it obviously comes from maintenance services. In parallel, the ability of user organizations to invest is reduced in the same proportions. Dennis questions the long term interest of such a strategy.
As far as maintenance is concerned - as in many other domains - open source solutions vendors focus first on customer satisfaction. I can’t help thinking about this client of ours who, when asked to talk about product features for a case study, spoke first about the high quality of our technical support services - which was, according to him, the main reason why he gave up his proprietary solution to adopt our solutions.
To quote him: “Even as a user of Talend Open Studio - the free tool from Talend - we are getting high quality support. The vendor offers a Bugtracker on their web site, which helps us to track the process of reported bugs. The first reaction of Talend’s support operators when a problem is reported is to try and solve the problem, not to brush it under the rug with classical arguments too often heard (’you are the only one with this problem’ - sounds familiar?).” This specific client is now building a connector that they will donate to the community. This is not what I call give-take but win-win!
This simple example illustrates the richness and advantages of the open source model. But let’s not be hypocrites: our ambition is to grow our business and improve our products. But we will not do this against our users, or by not providing good service. This is the difference pointed out by Dennis, whose views clearly go in the right direction.
As a conclusion I would also recommend reading this other post by Dennis, inspired by a Gartner case study that details the benefits Ikea Components got from a large Business Intelligence and Process Management project:
- Product availability: improved 30%
- Customer lead time: decreased 50%
- Customer claims: decreased 85%
- Inventory days: decreased 40%
- Order-handling costs: decreased 30%
But they still built an online help system that did not meet clients’ expectations…
I’ll close this post with Dennis’ conclusion: “Isn’t it a pity when companies that otherwise make great IT investments succeed in torpedoeing themselves by implementing something that is horribly flawed and detracts from the customer experience?”
Worth thinking about?
Bertrand
Yesterday’s InfoWorld home page boasted a great piece: Open source lessons from the French. Bertrand was interviewed by the editor Tom Kaneshige on the topic - after all Talend is probably one of the best examples of a successful French software vendor this decade.
Bertrand is quoted in the article:
“All students in France use open source,” says Bertrand Diard, CEO and co-founder of Talend, a French pioneer of open source data integration software. “A lot of universities in the U.S., except probably MIT, use traditional tools like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.” As a result, open source talent is more prevalent in France, Diard says; development is faster, and software quality is higher because French developers aren’t distracted by proprietary and competing technology. “The culture of open source is more advanced here.”
Yves
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