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Re: Nice List

# 1 - Posted by: Brian Teeman on 2008-12-29 14:08:20

That's a nice list Anthony of companies using a GPL business model. But how many of them are actualy making money and how many of them are merely dependant, for now, on a big benefactor or VC funding.

Please note I do not dispute that there are succesful GPL business models, I'm just not convinced about many of the companies in the list

# 2 - Posted by: Wilco Jansen on 2008-12-29 14:14:03

Hi Brian,

Some of these companies are in the fortune 500, so trust me they make money. True, these are examples of companies with probably a lot of VC money, promise I'll do a post soon of smaller companies who exactly do the same.

Regards, Wilco

Re: I know

# 3 - Posted by: Brian Teeman on 2008-12-29 14:27:40

Yes I know some of them are Fortune 500, I was just attempting to point out that many of them may not be actualy making money or in the case of others may be subsidising their open source activities with their closed source businesses.

I do not dispute that you can make money from open source software at all just that the list may not contain the best examples.

Re: More suggestions

# 4 - Posted by: Guido Jansen on 2008-12-29 17:52:23

Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/), Magento eCommerce (http://www.magentocommerce.com), SugarCRM (http://www.sugarcrm.com).

Besides making software, providing services that facilitate the open source community can also be profitable: Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net).

# 5 - Posted by: Nathan on 2008-12-30 08:53:58

Nice post.

# 6 - Posted by: Anthony Ferrara on 2008-12-30 22:51:20

Brian, I would actually say that companies making money off of proprietary software strengthens this argument... If a company makes 90% of it's money off a closed source app, why sink money into OS unless it's profitable?

Oh, and Redhat, Suse, Canonical, Aquia, Wordpress, Moodle, JBoss, Alfresco, SpringSource and Netbeans are all 100% Open Source (and 100% GPL)...

Out of the remaining, the only one that can be argued to not make a significant portion of it's profits from Open Source is IBM...

Re: pedantic

# 7 - Posted by: Brian Teeman on 2009-01-01 17:06:53

sorry for being pedantic but canonical is not 100% open source

# 8 - Posted by: Phil on 2009-01-01 17:07:09

Now please list me 13 companies that have less than 5 employees and are in the CMS Plugins 100% Commercial GPL business?

You cant.

I have seen this argument before - just because a MASSIVE company like RedHat etc do it in an open market doesn't mean it can be done by a small webshop making plugins for another application.

Re: Ummm...

# 9 - Posted by: Anthony Ferrara on 2009-01-02 15:58:31

@Brian, how is canonical not 100% open source? What PRODUCT of theirs is not?

@Phil, Show me 13 companies that are stable JUST providing 100% Proprietary CMS plugins with less than 5 employees? That means NO SUPPORT, NO SERVICES, ONLY a download...

You can't... None exist (that are stable at least)... Just because Massive company like microsoft CAN'T do it, doesn't mean nobody can? But that's right, those companies have come and gone, and show me one that still exists (Show me a company that provides no support/services)...

Besides, what GOOD company has 5 employees? What about growth? What about the business philosophy of grow or die?

Re: launchpad

# 10 - Posted by: Brian Teeman on 2009-01-02 16:52:55

I won't go into details here but launchpad - the developers tool currently isnt open source.

See

http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/cancomical-lynchpad

and

http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/07/23/mark-shuttleworth-launchpad-to-be-open-source-in-12-months

Re: You're missing some points...

# 11 - Posted by: JoomlaWorks on 2009-01-05 05:18:24

@Anthony

I really respect your work on Joomla, but your points are merely related to the reality of a CMS.

The way I see it, Joomla (and any other open source CMS) has TWO potential business models surrounding it:

- Small companies or freelancers making extensions and providing support (usually a mixed combination of free and commercial stuff). Profits are small but OK to make a decent living.

- 1 big company, usually the owner of the CMS (see Automattic for Wordpress or Acquia -aka Dries- for Drupal) focusing on paid support. They charge a lot of money for that and basically target big companies.

I don't see wht Redhat would ever bother going into the Joomla GPL extension business when they know:

a) it's easy to copy a GPL extension and release as your own just because you added some HTML markup (I've seen this a dozen times in JED already)

b) they cannot control the environment in which they make business (Joomla belongs to OSM Inc.).

The ENTIRE list of companies you mention, all do business in a controlled environment or their product is way too expensive for others to simply copy and re-market. RedHat, Suse/Novell, Canonical all market an OS, Alfresco and Moodle make their own CMS, I really don't see anyone making a product solely for the other. E.g. IBM does not make software that runs only on Redhat, or Alfresco does not care if the OS of the server is Ubuntu or CentOS or whatever.

See where I'm getting it?

Bottom line is:

- it's easy to judge how you see fit when you're on the "outside"

- it's easy to suggest utopian business models and send people to unemployment

- it's easy to suggest a liberal GPL policy on commercial extensions (=kiss of death) yet advise Phil:

"Besides, what GOOD company has 5 employees? What about growth? What about the business philosophy of grow or die?"

For a GPL purist, you see a great capitalist! So which one is it?

The Joomla core -in which you're in- and OSM need to understand that the commercial market is what drove the CMS to be the best worldwide. If you take this out of the equation, you have a CMS that's missing a lot of things.

With friendly regards,

Fotis

# 12 - Posted by: Amy Stephen on 2009-01-05 14:08:22

Isn't the real business model around a CMS service? The site developer/designer? Hosting? Web services?

Honestly, I think it's a foregone conclusion in the world (not just the tiny little Joomlasphere) that software is not the commodity - it's the knowledge needed to fire software up by creating innovative combinations of use.

Re: Amy, you're again out of the subject

# 13 - Posted by: JoomlaWorks on 2009-01-05 14:37:00

Amy, you're missing the point again, either by accident or deliberately.

Either comment on what others wrote or don't comment at all. We're not missing "the wise one" here.

Furthermore... You're not a developer, not a designer, not even a professional who makes sites for joomla for a living. So please spare your thoughts to yourself. It's easy to give advise when you're on the outside.

# 14 - Posted by: Barrie North on 2009-01-05 14:45:34

Let's look at this another way.

These discussions are perhaps besides the point. The Joomla *community* of devs that has been around since 2004 (at least) is built of a wide ecosystem of micro/niche small "shops", probably most of them sole proprietor ships.

Rather than ponder RedHat, let's think about how these guys are effected :)

# 15 - Posted by: Steve on 2009-01-05 15:03:51

my two cents ... in truth lies somewhere between.

I think its very hard to make a pure GNU/GPL extension business work. In a small business GPL world you need get income from a mix of sales and client work, plus ad sales, adsense, affiliate revenue and all sorts of other things. However, in a long run that's a good thing. Relying simply on one source of revenue (extension sales) is a reciepe for disaster.

Andrew Eddie put this well:

"I think one of the keys is diversity. It will be genuinely hard for a business to survive on the subscription sales for just one product ... I'm looking at a combination of subscription sales, project work and general consulting to provide a well-rounded base for economic viability."

http://www.alledia.com/blog/interviews/interview-with-andrew-eddie-from-newlifeinit.com/

Re: Missing the point

# 16 - Posted by: Steven Pignataro on 2009-01-05 15:37:20

I think many of you have missed the point behind 100% GNU/GPL business models.

Lets get one thing straight:

The companies listed above have had the following:

- Either VC capital investments

- Large financial injections

- Large contracts with governmental organizations etc.

So lets compare these to our businesses. YOU CAN'T. And please don't write back saying that you can! Because if you do - then I challenge you to invest a few million dollars into our company. Again - you can't.

So now lets discuss shortly about business that have less then 10 employees. Or around the 5 posted above. You have to have these employees - and lets say you pay each 12-15 an hour and they are full time plus all the other financial expenses blah blah blah. This is usually a monthly expense of around $8,000 to $10,000 with all the over head. Now the company also needs to show some sort of profit and growth to continue to expand. So lets face it - these companies need to protect there products - the work done by there employees. Now granted that some of the companies (such as ours) have GNU/GPL products and Commercial Products - but you can't force any company to change there business model so that they can loose revenue and or lay off a few of there employees to continue the growth - or de-growth of there company.

I know most of the people in this chat either work for another organization and or business owner and I will have to honestly admit - most business owners are not going agree that going to a full GNU/GPL business after a tried and true approach would benefit them. Not to mention for a few years I had a 100% GNU/GPL business - it didn't work. Not on a small scale. I couldn't hire anyone because I couldn't bring in the dollars and cents. Once going commercial and providing commercial services - things spurted.

Enough said - both sides win and both sides loose.

# 17 - Posted by: Amy Stephen on 2009-01-05 16:41:33

Furthermore... You're not a developer, not a designer, not even a professional who makes sites for joomla for a living. So please spare your thoughts to yourself. It's easy to give advise when you're on the outside.

Yes, I am. I am a developer. I am a designer. I am a professional who uses Joomla! to make a living. I just don't expect to earn a living selling my extensions. My business model focuses on my experience, knowledge, networking as a contributor to the project, and primarily, the services I offer. I don't plan to get rich but I love what I do and hope it will feed my family and help me pay my bills and save a bit for tomorrow.

# 18 - Posted by: JoomlaWorks on 2009-01-05 18:37:28

@Amy

Yes, but do you do this as you primary way of making a living? I think not...

# 19 - Posted by: Amy Stephen on 2009-01-05 18:38:17

Yes. :-)

# 20 - Posted by: David-Andrew on 2009-02-15 22:00:05

promise I'll do a post soon of smaller companies who exactly do the same.

Now please list me 13 companies that have less than 5 employees and are in the CMS Plugins 100% Commercial GPL business?

Please write that post :-)

I am interested in seeing more about smaller Joomla! 3PD's that are "managing" full GPL products. I think Dioscouri, is one of them!

Regards

David-Andrew