Why Commercial Open Source Has An Issue

Reading the creator of Compiere's own words, it was both a surprise and a prediction came true for some of us in the Open Source community. His words, though grabbing me by the throat, contains fossil evidence to the contrary. He is biting lips in between the lines of what life was for him in Compiere, which he admittedly sold off to a closed thinking buyer. It was predictable that without coming to terms with the community, it will be difficult if not impossible to sustain an Open Source software project. (Not so for proprietary ones as the business model is different. They made money (first) through closed patents and license fees. But as the proprietary market is becoming saturated and dying, Open Source becomes the avant garde of softare business today.)

But to say as I said in my topic title is quite something else. There are other successful commercial Open Source projects such as [fill in the blanks], and they will argue that they have a balanced, [fill in the blanks] that are sustainable and still endeared to the community. I would say, 'Not so fast'. Community verdicts usually takes time and for Compiere it took few months that year of 2006 and about 4 years later to finally sink in that it is not only shrinking but is put up on the guillotine and sold off to a closed owner. It is a candidate of the Open Source ERP graveyard.

In Compiere's case it was at war with its community. Same as the case of Mambo at war with Joomla. In such cases, yes, the commercial side has a big problem. But for those that are taking good care of the community they are quite safe. Still, I am saying here, 'Be afraid, be really [fill in the blanks]'.

I am not sure of the latest with SpringSource, that guards the Spring Framework, but when it went cuckoo, er I mean commercial with delayed free bug reports, the community went cuckoo, er I mean nuts over it. Perhaps SpringSource has done something about it, but whatever it is, it cannot thread far from the community promise of both Freedom and Free Lunch. (This is my theory against Richard Stallman. He said Freedom, Not Free Lunch.)

The community of free riders, er I mean respectable folks have to have your ware without even a registration form to fill in. For every good contributor in a project, there is a 99.9% lurker force out there. Lurking. But it is a force no doubt. It is the viral networked unseen empire called the down-loaders. Otherwise remove the "Download" button. Just remember where all your top ranking, rave reviews, [fill in the blanks] and multi-million hits come from before doing so.

Now I also said 'surprise' because we did not take Jorg Janke to give in that easily. I mean 'selling off' Compiere is like suicide. Of your own baby that is. Ok, wrong term. Homicide. Er, I mean infanticide. Anyway it is like a reincarnation of the creator as we can now see in his blog, a series of articles that examines the model of Open Source somewhat touching on the dynamics between commercial and community aspects. Still not to my insatiable liking but it is pretty well thought out and I dare say an authoritative sounding blog on the subject. Am looking forward to what can he really do in his next life, er I mean 'do next' in his life.