Tim's Business Model for Open Source

Tim O'Reiley gave a great presentation at EclipseCon 2005. He argued for business models for an industry shaped by open source. Here are the main points:

Architect your software in such a way that it can be used easily as a component of a larger system. Use a license that does not hinder such a combination. Keep your software modular, and make certain that you document all of the interfaces.

This fits very well with REST. Or make your service usable by a user (human) or by another service (code).

Release early and release often. Set up mechanisms for users to submit bugs and patches. Promote your most active users into roles of greater responsibility.

We have seen Atlassian do this, which has been pretty successful.

Focus your development efforts on speed of testing, assembly, and integration so that your users can always have the best components that the marketplace has to offer.

Yes, integration and composition!

Do not package up new features into monolithic releases, but instead add them on a regular basis as part of the normal user experience. Engage your users as real-time testers, and instrument the service so that you know how people use the new features.

Yes, the perpetual beta.

Use Linux, Apache, and other open source components running on commodity PC hardware as the basis for
any internet service. Arrange these components in fault-tolerant arrays, with
management tools that minimize the number of required sysadmins.

Don't forget to use hosting too. These days the hardware cost for starting up is quite low.

Don’t restrict your “architecture of participation” to software development. Involve your users both implicitly and explicitly in adding value to your application.

Yes, let users help themselves and add value to the services.

Use the power of the computer to monetize niches that formerly were too small to be commercial.

There is gold in the Long Tail.

Owning a unique, hard-torecreate source of data may lead to an Intelstyle single-source competitive advantage.

This is a significant point to ponder on. It is what evdb is trying to do, owning the events data and service.

And other fine points.