There's been a lot written on the blogosphere recently about what it means to be "open". At the OSA (Open Solutions Alliance), we have a diverse membership and are often asked what we think this means.
Inevitably discussion has gone down the path of licensing, or how strong each member’s community is. What isn’t discussed enough, IMO, is what best meets customer needs. Ultimately I think customer success should determine which business models are best, and as much as we want to believe there is a single simple answer, that's not the case. Customer requirements can vary greatly, depending on industry, their IT best practices, the type of solution in question, and the skills and know-how required to implement it. Companies that serve different market segments must evolve their business models to best meet the requirements of that segment. Some may be more services-intensive, requiring frequent code customization for example. Others may be strictly regulated in a manner that dictates how licensing and IP is managed. Because open source, especially in the applications space, is still relatively new, we think there is much room for experimentation regarding what business models are best for the most customers. Consequently, we don’t limit our membership based on some preconceived notion of which business models we think ought to be the best. We would rather let customers decide that, not us.
However, there is one notion that we don’t compromise. There’s a difference between “old guard” proprietary organizations and more open, collaborative organizations, not just in terms of how they manage their source code, but in how they fundamentally behave as companies. The former hoard know-how, act unilaterally, and are always trying to “manage” how customers and partners perceive their products and solutions, as if yielding as little real information as possible is the key to business success. The latter instead share knowledge, act collaboratively and transparently with their customers and within their industry, and they compete based on their superior ability to apply that knowledge in making their customers successful. We fundamentally believe that open and collaborative behavior is consistently superior to closed and unilateral behavior. This difference goes beyond how the source code is managed, to how the company fundamentally operates; How it engages with its customers and partners, its corporate marketing, and even corporate culture and internal politics and how it treats its own employees. A company’s DNA is either one or the other; these don’t mix.
This is hard to quantify, but you know it when you see it when interacting with the management. There are some typical markers… Freely available source and "truth in advertising" in licensing practices is a good sign, and one that we codified in our
Open Solution Definition. So is having public forums for customer feedback. (A closed company would never want the rest of the world to see an unfiltered, unmanaged view of what its customers think about its products.) Anyhow, the point is there are multiple ways a company can operate and still be “open”.
Moreover, here at the OSA, we practice what we preach. As I've blogged here before,
our own governance is based on the same spirit of openness and collaborative behavior that we think will win in the 21st century.
Thoughts welcome. I’m not sure it’s possible to write a strict definition of "open-ness" as I'm advocating here, or to form a comprehensive taxonomy of open and collaborative business models, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
