Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
Hi As I have some perspective about gvSIG (I was directly involved last 6 years), I may suggest you to contact directly with people in charge of the project both in main founder and two main contractors: CIT (Generalitat Valenciana): Martín García or Gabriel Carrión IVER: Pepe Vidal or Alvaro Anguix Prodevelop: Miguel Montesinos. This may be the best path for starting, as far as I know. Greetings Luis P.S. If you need some of the email addresses, please write to me by private email. Rafal Wawer wrote: Dear Daniele, No need to be sorry. The hasty was with the (-; (-: Anyway - please consider reformulating the sentence. I will suggest contacting someone from gvSIG (http://www.gvsig.org/web/) and ask for help - I am sure gvSIG wil be happy to cooperate. I am looking forward to the final document. (-: Cheers: Raf Dr. Rafal Wawer K.U.Leuven RD Division SADL (Spatial Application Division) Celestijnenlaan 200e bus 2224 BE-3001 Leuven-Heverlee Belgium tel. 0032 16 329731 *From:* discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] *On Behalf Of *daniele.ocu ocu *Sent:* 15 December 2009 18:07 *To:* discuss@lists.osgeo.org *Subject:* [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models Dear Rafal, Thank you very much for your considerations. I am also very thankful for the suggestions. I am sorry if the statements in the report appeared to be hasty but I totally agree with you, the research is only in the beginning and I will go on increasing the contact with the companies and lists you suggested. Daniele -- Researcher @ Osaka City University Graduate School for Creative Cities http://gisws.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/gistrends My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. — Charles F. Kettering ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
Actually Miguel, the question was asked by Daniele (-: I had general knowledge on gvSIG project, coming from the evaluation and documentation of that project within CASCADOSS so I pointed out gvSIG to Daniele, who is making a study on FOSS4G business models, as an example of a development, driven by needs for savings on software costs, ordered by regional government. Anyway - thank you very much Miguel, for explanation on business aspect of the gvSIG project. 160% is a very impressive result indeed! (-: Best regards: Raf Dr. Rafal Wawer K.U.Leuven RD Division SADL (Spatial Application Division) Celestijnenlaan 200e bus 2224 BE-3001 Leuven-Heverlee Belgium tel. 0032 16 329731 -Original Message- From: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Miguel Montesinos Sent: 18 December 2009 14:25 To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models Hi Rafal, I've been mentioned, so I'm involved ;-) I can give you some generic hints. I suggest (if you haven't) having a look at Wikinomics [1]. Regarding gvSIG, there are not metric data collected so far. I can tell you that companies (not only Iver and Prodevelop) working around gvSIG, started sharing traditional closed business models (I call them deprived models, because they limit what you can do with the software) with open-source ones, and the results happily forced us to leave deprived models towards an open-source one. AFAIK, we both have no new incomes from deprived models, but old legacy systems under maintenance. The only metric that I can provide you is that at Prodevelop, our revenues have increased 160 % in a 4 year period mainly due to the adoption of FOSS4G business models. Another contribution to this can be made by Luis W. Sevilla, who (if I'm not wrong) recently convinced his managers to move to open source business models. [1] http://www.wikinomics.com Regards, - Miguel Montesinos CTO PRODEVELOP, S.L. mmontesinos [at] prodevelop [dot] es www.prodevelop.es -Mensaje original- De: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] En nombre de Luis W. Sevilla Enviado el: viernes, 18 de diciembre de 2009 13:36 Para: OSGeo Discussions Asunto: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models Hi As I have some perspective about gvSIG (I was directly involved last 6 years), I may suggest you to contact directly with people in charge of the project both in main founder and two main contractors: CIT (Generalitat Valenciana): Martín García or Gabriel Carrión IVER: Pepe Vidal or Alvaro Anguix Prodevelop: Miguel Montesinos. This may be the best path for starting, as far as I know. Greetings Luis P.S. If you need some of the email addresses, please write to me by private email. Rafal Wawer wrote: Dear Daniele, No need to be sorry. The hasty was with the (-; (-: Anyway - please consider reformulating the sentence. I will suggest contacting someone from gvSIG (http://www.gvsig.org/web/) and ask for help - I am sure gvSIG wil be happy to cooperate. I am looking forward to the final document. (-: Cheers: Raf Dr. Rafal Wawer K.U.Leuven RD Division SADL (Spatial Application Division) Celestijnenlaan 200e bus 2224 BE-3001 Leuven-Heverlee Belgium tel. 0032 16 329731 *From:* discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] *On Behalf Of *daniele.ocu ocu *Sent:* 15 December 2009 18:07 *To:* discuss@lists.osgeo.org *Subject:* [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models Dear Rafal, Thank you very much for your considerations. I am also very thankful for the suggestions. I am sorry if the statements in the report appeared to be hasty but I totally agree with you, the research is only in the beginning and I will go on increasing the contact with the companies and lists you suggested. Daniele -- Researcher @ Osaka City University Graduate School for Creative Cities http://gisws.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/gistrends My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. - Charles F. Kettering ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
Dear Daniele, No need to be sorry. The hasty was with the (-; (-: Anyway - please consider reformulating the sentence. I will suggest contacting someone from gvSIG (http://www.gvsig.org/web/) and ask for help - I am sure gvSIG wil be happy to cooperate. I am looking forward to the final document. (-: Cheers: Raf Dr. Rafal Wawer K.U.Leuven RD Division SADL (Spatial Application Division) Celestijnenlaan 200e bus 2224 BE-3001 Leuven-Heverlee Belgium tel. 0032 16 329731 From: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of daniele.ocu ocu Sent: 15 December 2009 18:07 To: discuss@lists.osgeo.org Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models Dear Rafal, Thank you very much for your considerations. I am also very thankful for the suggestions. I am sorry if the statements in the report appeared to be hasty but I totally agree with you, the research is only in the beginning and I will go on increasing the contact with the companies and lists you suggested. Daniele -- Researcher @ Osaka City University Graduate School for Creative Cities http://gisws.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/gistrends My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. - Charles F. Kettering ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
daniele.ocu ocu wrote: Dear all, Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions on reading material about business and FOSS4G. The idea for this report would be a summary with metrics showing how companies have changed after adopting FOSS4G. It would be a document to present why adopting open source can be interesting for a company. Again, with all due respect, I have to suggest that adopting open source is such a broad term as to be essentially meaningless. A company can: - adopt a specific piece of open source technology, as the result of a make/buy analysis for a specific software requirement (MySQL vs. PostGres vs. roll-your-own) - where all the standard metrics of purchase cost, maintenance cost, life-cycle cost apply - incorporate a piece of open source code into a product - develop a piece of software for internal use and then release it as open source as a way to reduce support costs - develop a software product and release it under an open source license and/or a dual license model, as part of a specific business strategy - develop a general open source model for internal use of software - develop a general open source model for a software business - etc., etc., etc. What problem are you trying to solve? -- Miles R. Fidelman, Director of Government Programs Traverse Technologies 145 Tremont Street, 3rd Floor Boston, MA 02111 mfidel...@traversetechnologies.com 857-362-8314 www.traversetechnologies.com ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
gvSIG has very nice marketing materials on the implementaiotn of FOSS4G and OSS in general in reigonal government - very convining (-; http://www.gvsig.org/web/ I have their prints on the history - very nice arguments. (-: You can also look into OSOR (Open Source Observatory and Repository): http://www.osor.eu/. Plenty of nice cases there. Success!! (-: Best regards: Raf Dr. Rafal Wawer K.U.Leuven RD Division SADL (Spatial Application Division) Celestijnenlaan 200e bus 2224 BE-3001 Leuven-Heverlee Belgium tel. 0032 16 329731 -Original Message- From: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Ravi Sent: 25 November 2009 08:46 To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models Hi, some examples about how different European cities have shifted to FOSS GIS for, traffic management, policing and even health, will be welcome. Such examples can pave the way for new entrepreneurs. Ravi Kumar --- On Wed, 25/11/09, Venkatesh Raghavan ragha...@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp wrote: From: Venkatesh Raghavan ragha...@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models To: OSGeo Discussions discuss@lists.osgeo.org, OSGeo Marketing market...@lists.osgeo.org Date: Wednesday, 25 November, 2009, 9:09 AM Hi All, Nice to see responses to the intresting thread started bu Daniele. I think what Daniele is looking for is some kind of a How to convince a venture (or social) captitalist to invest in FOSS4G technnologies and/or companies. Guess the venture capitalist would be inerested to see some statistical data on how FOSS4G based companies are growing elsewhere and what are their core business stratagies. Hope is see some intresting ideas emanating from this thread. Best Venka Miles Fidelman wrote: One more reference: Wikipedia's history of open source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_history) has a pretty good discussion of the early days of software development - when pretty much everything was open source, but the term had not been coined yet. Miles Miles Fidelman wrote: Charlie, Charlie Schweik wrote: See http://www.umass.edu/opensource/schweik/Chapter_2_schweik_final_dr aft.pdf This book still is being finalized and not yet published. If anyone on this list reads this chapter, I'd appreciate any comments you may have. If you Daniele, or anyone else uses content from this in some capacity, I'd appreciate you contacting me so I can give you information on how to cite it. Since you asked :-) A few comments: 1. I seriously question the characterization of open source as primarily driven by volunteers. History says otherwise. 2. I'd look for some better sources re. monitary support for early open source projects. If you look a little harder, you'll find that almost all widely-used open source software started with somebody who was working at a job that paid them to write an initial code base - be it working on a a government contract or grant, or working on software as in internal IT staffer. The examples I always point to are: - Apache (started as the NCSA web daemon) - Unix (it all goes back to Bell Labs, with the BSD variations going back to Berkeley) - Sendmail - Postgres And the list goes on. (One interesting list of very early projects: http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Some_dates_open_source.html) Yes, a sizeable portion of contributors are volunteers - but some historical spelunking quickly points out that most projects started with someone who was being paid for their time. (Richard Stallman might be the exception, though MIT provided for his support in various forms). 3. Historically, the motivations you list as academic and scientific motivation #2 and #3 are the earliest and oldest motivations for open source code - dating back to the period when government funded work automatically entered the public domain (thus predating the entire notion of open source licenses). Almost ALL early software was funded by the government (notably DARPA and NSF), was shared as academic research, and automatically entered the public domain. Hope this is useful, Miles Fidelman ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage. http://in.yahoo.com/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
Venkatesh Raghavan wrote: I think what Daniele is looking for is some kind of a How to convince a venture (or social) captitalist to invest in FOSS4G technnologies and/or companies. Guess the venture capitalist would be inerested to see some statistical data on how FOSS4G based companies are growing elsewhere and what are their core business stratagies. I just went back and re-read Daniele's initial post, and now realize that it's not entirely clear what Daniele was asking for. So. Daniele, When you said convince his company management and finances to invest in FOSS4G technologies over the next 5 years. The company presently does a small part of its business using FOSS4G tools but is wondering if it should take a deeper plunge into the FOSS4G world. Does this refer to investing in FOSS4G tools for: - internal use - as part of the toolkit used in company engagements - as a service offering (e.g., supporting FOSS4G tools) - as components of systems built for clients - as products to develop and release/market - as something else - as a combination of the above? A little scoping along these lines would be very useful in providing input to a document with concrete data about how companies elsewhere in the world are profiting, growing, increasing market share and the kind of clients that they are catering to. Also... when you say The company also wants to consider marketing broad based services for SDI - I sort of infer that you're not talking about Strategic Defense. So... who are you expanding the acronym? Finally, when you're done - how about sharing a copy of the resulting paper, or at least a version with proprietary information removed? Cheers, Miles -- Miles R. Fidelman, Director of Government Programs Traverse Technologies 145 Tremont Street, 3rd Floor Boston, MA 02111 mfidel...@traversetechnologies.com 857-362-8314 www.traversetechnologies.com ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
Hi Daniele, It would be great if some of the business leaders in the OSGeo community could provide me with inputs for the report. Your input will not only help me convince them that FOSS4G is worth it (I am already convinced, but need some data to support my claim) but also help me to understand the business models better. I'm not a business person; I'm an academic. I'm in the process of finishing up a book about open source collaboration. I have a *draft* chapter where I have attempted to summarize the literature on the open source ecosystem. Starting on page 14, I have tried to summarize various business strategies I have found (I also try and summarize government and nonprofit interests as well). See http://www.umass.edu/opensource/schweik/Chapter_2_schweik_final_draft.pdf This book still is being finalized and not yet published. If anyone on this list reads this chapter, I'd appreciate any comments you may have. If you Daniele, or anyone else uses content from this in some capacity, I'd appreciate you contacting me so I can give you information on how to cite it. I hope this helps a little. Cheers Charlie Schweik Associate Professor UMass Amherst attachment: cschweik.vcf___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
Hi all, A friend of mine at a medium-sized IT company in Japan needs to convince his company management and finances to invest in FOSS4G technologies over the next 5 years. The company presently does a small part of its business using FOSS4G tools but is wondering if it should take a deeper plunge into the FOSS4G world. In order to convince the company management and finance departments, they need to produce a document with concrete data about *how companies elsewhere in the world are profiting, growing, increasing market share and the kind of clients that they are catering to*. Even company brochures, financial reports etc. would help. The company also wants to consider marketing broad based services for SDI using FOSS4G technologies and would like to know market potential in other countries and region for SDI related services. Since a part of my Master thesis deals with business models for FOSS4G, I find their situation interesting and would like to help them to take a deeper plunge into the FOSS4G world. In order to help prepare a brief report for them including some statistical information about few of the bigger players in FOSS4G business. It would be great if some of the business leaders in the OSGeo community could provide me with inputs for the report. Your input will not only help me convince them that FOSS4G is worth it (I am already convinced, but need some data to support my claim) but also help me to understand the business models better. If you want to keep your inputs confidential, you are welcome to contact me off-list (daniele.ocuATgmail.com). Names, names of companies will be kept confidential (just call them company A,B,C etc) in the final report. Once the report is ready It will be shared it as an open document under appropriate CC license, if that is desired. The report needs to be ready in three weeks, I look forward for the inputs. Thank you in advance. Best regards Daniele -- Researcher @ Osaka City University Graduate School for Creative Cities http://gisws.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/gistrends My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. — Charles F. Kettering ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss Daniele, working from there I have recently published draft versions of two new papers (and weeks ago promised you to send the links) detailing Open Source Business processes [1] and the other showing the needs that lead to the formation of OSGeo [2]. They are more general in tone and do not give explicit examples but maybe are a good introduction. Hope this helps. Best regards, [1] http://arnulf.us/Open_Source_Business_Models [2] http://arnulf.us/History_and_Mission_of_OSGeo -- Arnulf Christl President OSGeo http://www.osgeo.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
One more reference: Wikipedia's history of open source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_history) has a pretty good discussion of the early days of software development - when pretty much everything was open source, but the term had not been coined yet. Miles Miles Fidelman wrote: Charlie, Charlie Schweik wrote: See http://www.umass.edu/opensource/schweik/Chapter_2_schweik_final_draft.pdf This book still is being finalized and not yet published. If anyone on this list reads this chapter, I'd appreciate any comments you may have. If you Daniele, or anyone else uses content from this in some capacity, I'd appreciate you contacting me so I can give you information on how to cite it. Since you asked :-) A few comments: 1. I seriously question the characterization of open source as primarily driven by volunteers. History says otherwise. 2. I'd look for some better sources re. monitary support for early open source projects. If you look a little harder, you'll find that almost all widely-used open source software started with somebody who was working at a job that paid them to write an initial code base - be it working on a a government contract or grant, or working on software as in internal IT staffer. The examples I always point to are: - Apache (started as the NCSA web daemon) - Unix (it all goes back to Bell Labs, with the BSD variations going back to Berkeley) - Sendmail - Postgres And the list goes on. (One interesting list of very early projects: http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Some_dates_open_source.html) Yes, a sizeable portion of contributors are volunteers - but some historical spelunking quickly points out that most projects started with someone who was being paid for their time. (Richard Stallman might be the exception, though MIT provided for his support in various forms). 3. Historically, the motivations you list as academic and scientific motivation #2 and #3 are the earliest and oldest motivations for open source code - dating back to the period when government funded work automatically entered the public domain (thus predating the entire notion of open source licenses). Almost ALL early software was funded by the government (notably DARPA and NSF), was shared as academic research, and automatically entered the public domain. Hope this is useful, Miles Fidelman -- Miles R. Fidelman, Director of Government Programs Traverse Technologies 145 Tremont Street, 3rd Floor Boston, MA 02111 mfidel...@traversetechnologies.com 857-362-8314 www.traversetechnologies.com ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
Hi All, Nice to see responses to the intresting thread started bu Daniele. I think what Daniele is looking for is some kind of a How to convince a venture (or social) captitalist to invest in FOSS4G technnologies and/or companies. Guess the venture capitalist would be inerested to see some statistical data on how FOSS4G based companies are growing elsewhere and what are their core business stratagies. Hope is see some intresting ideas emanating from this thread. Best Venka Miles Fidelman wrote: One more reference: Wikipedia's history of open source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_history) has a pretty good discussion of the early days of software development - when pretty much everything was open source, but the term had not been coined yet. Miles Miles Fidelman wrote: Charlie, Charlie Schweik wrote: See http://www.umass.edu/opensource/schweik/Chapter_2_schweik_final_draft.pdf This book still is being finalized and not yet published. If anyone on this list reads this chapter, I'd appreciate any comments you may have. If you Daniele, or anyone else uses content from this in some capacity, I'd appreciate you contacting me so I can give you information on how to cite it. Since you asked :-) A few comments: 1. I seriously question the characterization of open source as primarily driven by volunteers. History says otherwise. 2. I'd look for some better sources re. monitary support for early open source projects. If you look a little harder, you'll find that almost all widely-used open source software started with somebody who was working at a job that paid them to write an initial code base - be it working on a a government contract or grant, or working on software as in internal IT staffer. The examples I always point to are: - Apache (started as the NCSA web daemon) - Unix (it all goes back to Bell Labs, with the BSD variations going back to Berkeley) - Sendmail - Postgres And the list goes on. (One interesting list of very early projects: http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Some_dates_open_source.html) Yes, a sizeable portion of contributors are volunteers - but some historical spelunking quickly points out that most projects started with someone who was being paid for their time. (Richard Stallman might be the exception, though MIT provided for his support in various forms). 3. Historically, the motivations you list as academic and scientific motivation #2 and #3 are the earliest and oldest motivations for open source code - dating back to the period when government funded work automatically entered the public domain (thus predating the entire notion of open source licenses). Almost ALL early software was funded by the government (notably DARPA and NSF), was shared as academic research, and automatically entered the public domain. Hope this is useful, Miles Fidelman ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
i am glad if the support services linked in the osgeo.org website also, to bring corporate trust and a contact, that may be we can link to bring great branding program -- Frans Thamura Meruvian. Experiential Tempation of Java and Enterprise OpenSource Meruvian bukan hanya membuat anak SMK menjadi bisa tapi SAKTI, malah saktinya SAKTI Mandraguna. Mobile: +62 855 7888 699 Blog Profile: http://frans.thamura.info We provide services to migrate your apps to Java (web), in amazing fast and reliable. 2009/11/25 Venkatesh Raghavan ragha...@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp Hi All, Nice to see responses to the intresting thread started bu Daniele. I think what Daniele is looking for is some kind of a How to convince a venture (or social) captitalist to invest in FOSS4G technnologies and/or companies. Guess the venture capitalist would be inerested to see some statistical data on how FOSS4G based companies are growing elsewhere and what are their core business stratagies. Hope is see some intresting ideas emanating from this thread. Best Venka Miles Fidelman wrote: One more reference: Wikipedia's history of open source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_history) has a pretty good discussion of the early days of software development - when pretty much everything was open source, but the term had not been coined yet. Miles Miles Fidelman wrote: Charlie, Charlie Schweik wrote: See http://www.umass.edu/opensource/schweik/Chapter_2_schweik_final_draft.pdf This book still is being finalized and not yet published. If anyone on this list reads this chapter, I'd appreciate any comments you may have. If you Daniele, or anyone else uses content from this in some capacity, I'd appreciate you contacting me so I can give you information on how to cite it. Since you asked :-) A few comments: 1. I seriously question the characterization of open source as primarily driven by volunteers. History says otherwise. 2. I'd look for some better sources re. monitary support for early open source projects. If you look a little harder, you'll find that almost all widely-used open source software started with somebody who was working at a job that paid them to write an initial code base - be it working on a a government contract or grant, or working on software as in internal IT staffer. The examples I always point to are: - Apache (started as the NCSA web daemon) - Unix (it all goes back to Bell Labs, with the BSD variations going back to Berkeley) - Sendmail - Postgres And the list goes on. (One interesting list of very early projects: http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Some_dates_open_source.html) Yes, a sizeable portion of contributors are volunteers - but some historical spelunking quickly points out that most projects started with someone who was being paid for their time. (Richard Stallman might be the exception, though MIT provided for his support in various forms). 3. Historically, the motivations you list as academic and scientific motivation #2 and #3 are the earliest and oldest motivations for open source code - dating back to the period when government funded work automatically entered the public domain (thus predating the entire notion of open source licenses). Almost ALL early software was funded by the government (notably DARPA and NSF), was shared as academic research, and automatically entered the public domain. Hope this is useful, Miles Fidelman ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
Hi, some examples about how different European cities have shifted to FOSS GIS for, traffic management, policing and even health, will be welcome. Such examples can pave the way for new entrepreneurs. Ravi Kumar --- On Wed, 25/11/09, Venkatesh Raghavan ragha...@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp wrote: From: Venkatesh Raghavan ragha...@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models To: OSGeo Discussions discuss@lists.osgeo.org, OSGeo Marketing market...@lists.osgeo.org Date: Wednesday, 25 November, 2009, 9:09 AM Hi All, Nice to see responses to the intresting thread started bu Daniele. I think what Daniele is looking for is some kind of a How to convince a venture (or social) captitalist to invest in FOSS4G technnologies and/or companies. Guess the venture capitalist would be inerested to see some statistical data on how FOSS4G based companies are growing elsewhere and what are their core business stratagies. Hope is see some intresting ideas emanating from this thread. Best Venka Miles Fidelman wrote: One more reference: Wikipedia's history of open source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_history) has a pretty good discussion of the early days of software development - when pretty much everything was open source, but the term had not been coined yet. Miles Miles Fidelman wrote: Charlie, Charlie Schweik wrote: See http://www.umass.edu/opensource/schweik/Chapter_2_schweik_final_draft.pdf This book still is being finalized and not yet published. If anyone on this list reads this chapter, I'd appreciate any comments you may have. If you Daniele, or anyone else uses content from this in some capacity, I'd appreciate you contacting me so I can give you information on how to cite it. Since you asked :-) A few comments: 1. I seriously question the characterization of open source as primarily driven by volunteers. History says otherwise. 2. I'd look for some better sources re. monitary support for early open source projects. If you look a little harder, you'll find that almost all widely-used open source software started with somebody who was working at a job that paid them to write an initial code base - be it working on a a government contract or grant, or working on software as in internal IT staffer. The examples I always point to are: - Apache (started as the NCSA web daemon) - Unix (it all goes back to Bell Labs, with the BSD variations going back to Berkeley) - Sendmail - Postgres And the list goes on. (One interesting list of very early projects: http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Some_dates_open_source.html) Yes, a sizeable portion of contributors are volunteers - but some historical spelunking quickly points out that most projects started with someone who was being paid for their time. (Richard Stallman might be the exception, though MIT provided for his support in various forms). 3. Historically, the motivations you list as academic and scientific motivation #2 and #3 are the earliest and oldest motivations for open source code - dating back to the period when government funded work automatically entered the public domain (thus predating the entire notion of open source licenses). Almost ALL early software was funded by the government (notably DARPA and NSF), was shared as academic research, and automatically entered the public domain. Hope this is useful, Miles Fidelman ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage. http://in.yahoo.com/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Question about FOSS4G Business Models
Hi Daniele,
It would be great if some of the business leaders in the OSGeo community
could
provide me with inputs for the report. Your input will not only
help me convince them that FOSS4G is worth it
(I am already convinced, but need some data to support my
claim) but also help me to understand the business models better.
There is a paper from Arnulf Christl you might already know of:
Free Software and Open Source Business Models
@INCOLLECTION{christl2008,
author = {Christl, Arnulf},
title = {Free Software and Open Source Business Models},
booktitle = {Open Source Approaches in Spatial Data Handling},
publisher = {Springer},
year = {2008},
editor = {G. Brent Hall and Michael G. Leahy},
pages = {21--48},
}
You can find the chapter for download here:
http://swbplus.bsz-bw.de/bsz284302910kap.pdf
Hope this helps,
Martin
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