The future of open source

David M Williams
Thursday, 27 March 2008 05:44

Opinion and Analysis

This week, the covers were lifted on North Bridge Venture Partner’s annual Future of Open Source survey. The results present a clear picture where pundits expect open source to make huge inroads as well as where proprietary software is likely to retain dominance. Other interesting insights came up. Here’s what the future of open source looks like. Some background material: a panel of experts including luminaries from such well known companies and teams as Sun Microsystems, Ubuntu Linux, SugarCRM and the Ingres enterprise database met at Infoworld’s Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) this week to discuss the future of open source, giving predictions regarding the types of companies which will drive the next wave of commercial open source successes.

Ubuntu, of course, need no introduction and the other companies are also well known such as Sun Microsystems who gave rise to many important UNIX technologies and are the new owners of MySQL. Representatives also participated from North Bridge Venture Partners – a venture-capital firm with $2.2b under management – and Acquia – perhaps best known for the product they support, Drupal, a popular web-based content management system (CMS.)

The North Bridge Venture Partners annually undertake their survey on the Future of Open Source. The results were presented at Infoworld’s 5th annual conference through the panel who then gave a wide-ranging discussion. This year OSBC was held in San Francisco over two days in late March.

Michael Skok, General Partner of North Bridge Venture Partners said “The highly visible commercial success of open source has helped firmly place it on the map as one of the most influential market segments within the software industry.”

He continued to say that open source software is drastically changing the direction the worldwide software industry is moving in. He expressed the goal of the survey was to aid in identifying key trends and thus reveal as much as possible what the future may look like.

The full survey results are online at http://acquia.com/northbridgesurvey and a PowerPoint presentation at http://acquia.com/files/osbc2008nbvpsurvey.pdf and the key findings will be expounded on shortly.

The panel participants did not mince their words and spoke strongly about their products and the licensing model they have chosen. Some were particularly dramatic: “The age of proprietary, closed software is nearing its end,” said John Roberts who is the chairman, CEO and co-founder of SugarCRM, a popular LAMP-based customer relationship management (CRM) package.

SugarCRM have successfully found a commercial market for their product embracing software as a service (SaaS.) Perhaps predictably, Roberts was particularly emphatic about this model saying, “It’s critical that customers have as many software solution options as possible, such as on-demand, on-site and appliance-based solutions.”

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu said “Cooperation, consensus and community are the primary drivers of open source.” Before adding that open source’s visibility and importance continues to grow, and “we continue to see innovation in the business models, licensing and governance structures that drive the free software platform.”

Let’s see what the future holds. Please read on.

CONTINUED