Commercial open source applications
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Open source software is widely used for private and non-commercial applications. In addition, many commercial organizations use open source frameworks, modules, and libraries inside their proprietary, for-profit products and services. Since GNU and some other open source licenses stipulate that derived works must distribute their intellectual property under an open source (copyleft) license, legal and technical mechanisms have been developed to accommodate vendors' commercial goals:
- A dual-license model, where a code base is published under a traditional open source license and a commercial license simultaneously. Vendors typically charge a perpetual license fee for additional closed-source features, supplementary documentation, testing, and quality, as well as intellectual property indemnification to protect the purchaser from legal liability.
- Functional encapsulation, where an open source framework or library is installed on a user's computer separately from the commercial product, and the commercial product uses the open source functionality in an "arm's length" way (under the argument that the commercial product was shipped without the open source library, even though it uses it). Vendors typically charge a perpetual license fee for the functionality that they provide under closed source, as they usually don't provide services or other direct value for the open source elements.
- A software as a service model, under the argument that the vendor is charging for the services, not the software itself (because the software is never shipped to customers or installed on their computers). Vendors typically charge a monthly subscription fee for use of their hosted applications.
- Not charging for the software, but only for the support, training, and consulting services that assist users of the open source software. Vendors typically charge an annual fee for support, per-student fees for training, and per-project fees for consulting engagements.
An often-asked question is, "are vendors making real money at this?" In terms of a traditional enterprise software company, this is probably the wrong question to ask. Looking at the landscape of open source applications, many of the larger ones are sponsored (and largely written) by system companies such as IBM and Sun who may not have an objective of software license revenues. Their motivation tends to be more strategic, in the sense that they are trying to change the rules of a marketplace and reduce the influence of vendors such as Microsoft. In the case of smaller vendors doing open source work, their objectives may be less "immediate revenue growth" and more "developing a large and loyal community," which may be the basis of a corporate valuation at merger time.
Except for Red Hat and VA Software, no other pure open source company has gone public in the major stock markets. However, two firms on the list below may go public during 2008. The remainder are likely to be acquired, as is the norm for all pre-public software companies.
[edit] List of Commercial Open Source Applications and Services
| Product or Service Name (business models used) |
Vendor | Description | Current Version | Open Source Project Name |
Ver 1.0 Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Birt (2) | Actuate | Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools | 2.1.3 | BIRT Exchange Eclipse |
2005 |
| Alfresco (1,3,4) | Alfresco | Enterprise Content Management, Web Content Management | 2.2 | Alfresco Labs | 2006 |
| Compiere (1,3,4) | Compiere | ERP and CRM | 2.6.1 | Compiere | 2000? |
| OpenWorkbench (1,4) | Computer Associates | Project Management / Governance Tools | 1.1.4 | Open Workbench | 2004 |
| db4o (1,4) | db4o | ODBMS | 6.0 | db4o | ? |
| Funambol Server (1,4) | Funambol | Mobile Email and PIM Synchronization | 6.0 | Funambol (neé Sync4j) |
2001 |
| Poseidon for UML (1) | Gentleware | Software Modeling Tool | 6.0 | ArgoUML | 1998 |
| Posterita (1) | Posterita | Retail POS | 1.6 | Posterita POS | 2007 |
| Hyperic HQ Enterprise (1) | Hyperic | Systems & Application Management | 3.1 | Hyperic HQ | 2004 |
| Lotus Symphony (1,4) | IBM | Office Productivity Suite | Eclipse, OpenOffice |
2007 | |
| Rational Application Developer (1,4) | IBM | Software Development Tools | Eclipse | 2002? | |
| Websphere (1,4) | IBM | Web Server, Application Server, Middleware | Apache | 2002? | |
| Ingres Enterprise (1) | Ingres | RDBMS | 2006 Rel. 2 | Ingres | ? |
| Intalio BPMS (1,4) | Intalio | Business Process Management - Workflow | ? | Eclipse, Intalio | ? |
| Interface21 Framework (1) | Interface21 | Software Development Framework | 1.1 | Spring | ? |
| Snare (1,4) | InterSect Alliance | Log collection and analysis | 4.0 | Snare | 2001 |
| FUSE ESB(4) | IONA | Enterprise service bus | v3 | Apache ServiceMix | 2006 |
| FUSE Services Framework(4) | IONA | JAX-WS 2.0 service-enablement framework | v2 | Apache CXF | 2006 |
| FUSE Mediation Router(4) | IONA | Routing and process mediation engine | v1 | Apache Camel | 2006 |
| FUSE Services Message Broker(4) | IONA | JMS platform | v5 | Apache ActiveMQ | 2006 |
| Business Intelligence Suite (1) | JasperSoft | Report Writing System | 2.0 | Jasper | 1996 |
| Jitterbit Integration Server (1,4) | Jitterbit | Application Integration | 1.3 | Jitterbit | 2006?
|
| KnowledgeTree (1,3,4) | KnowledgeTree | Document and Records Management System | 3.4 | KnowledgeTree | 2004 |
| Liferay Portal (4) | Liferay | Enterprise web portal | 5.0.1 | Liferay Portal | 2000? |
| Project Lasso (1) | LogLogic | collect Windows event logs | 4.0.0 | Project Lasso | 2006 |
| Mozilla Firefox (?) | Mozilla | Alternative web browser | 3.0 | Mozilla Firefox | 2004 |
| Mule (1,4) | MuleSource | Enterprise Service Bus and Integration Platform | 1.4 | Mule | 2003 |
| Mono(1) | Novell | Open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET application framework | 1.9 | Mono | ? |
| SUSE Linux (4) | Novell | Enterprise Linux | 10.3 | SUSE Linux | ? |
| Openbravo (4) | Openbravo | ERP | 2.33 | Openbravo ERP | 2001 |
| Berkeley DB (?) | Oracle | DBMS engines | 4.6, 3.2, 2.3 | Berkeley DB, Java edition, XML edition (neé Sleepycat) |
2003? |
| Project.net (3,4) | Project.net | Project and Portfolio Management | 8.2.1 | projectnet | 2000 |
| project-open (3,4) | project-open | Project and Portfolio Management | 3.3.1 | project-open | 2003 |
| JBoss (1,3,4) | Red Hat | J2EE Application Server | 4.2 | JBoss | 2001 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux(3,4) | Red Hat | Enterprise | 5 | Red Hat | ? |
| MySource Matrix (1,4) | Squiz.net | Enterprise Content Management System | v3.16.4 | MySource Matrix | 2002 |
| SugarCRM (1,3) | SugarCRM | Sales Force Automation | 5.0 | SugarCRM | 2004 |
| NetBeans (1,4) | Sun | Software Development Tools (Java, Ruby, Perl, PHP, etc.) |
6.0 | NetBeans | 2000 |
| Java Enterprise System (1,4) | Sun | Application Server, Middleware, LDAP, etc. | 5 | Java | 2003? |
| MySQL (1,4) | Sun | RDBMS (MySQL was acquired by Sun Jan. 2008) | 5.0 | MySQL | 2000 |
| Solaris (1,4) | Sun | Operating System | 10 | Open Solaris | 2005? |
| Star Office (4) | Sun | Office Productivity Suite | 8.0 | OpenOffice | 2000 |
| Sun Studio (1,4) | Sun | Software Development Tools for C, C++ | 8.1 | NetBeans | 2000 |
| Cruise Control Enterprise (4) | ThoughtWorks | Software Development Tools | 1.0 | CruiseControl | 2007 |
| RubyWorks (1,4) | ThoughtWorks | Software Development Tools / Runtime Environment |
1.0 | Several | 2007 |
| Tripwire Enterprise (1) | Tripwire | System and Network Management | 7 | Tripwire | 2000? |
| QT (1) | Trolltech | GUI development toolkit | 4.4 | QT | ? |
| Untangle (1) | Untangle | Network Gateway Platform | 5.0 | Untangle | 2007 |
| Vyatta (1,4) | Vyatta | Router, firewall, VPN | VC3 | Vyatta Community | 2006 |
| Zimbra (1,3,4) | Zimbra | Enterprise Email Messaging and Collaboration | 5.0.3 | Zimbra Open Source Edition | 2004 |
| Zope (3,4) | Zope | Content management system and web portal | 2.10.5 | zope.org | ? |
