Open Sources 2.0

Chapter 7. Open Source and the Commodity Urge: Disruptive Models for a Disruptive Development Process

Matthew N. Asay

Open source hastens software’s natural trend toward standardization/commodification. While technologically innovative companies will always find ample customer interest, the most important innovations for the next decade of software will come from business model innovation, mostly spawned by open source license requirements. Open source builds a new intellectual property regime centered on the source of code, not source code. Protection, in other words, shifts to “owning” the code creator, rather than the product she creates. Those business models that acknowledge this and leverage it will yield better profits than those that attempt a halfway embrace (or rejection) of open source.

Introduction

We are missing the point. Yes, open source imposes dramatic changes on the software industry, and yes, it is roiling the fortunes of many an established vendor. It will continue to do so, and at an increased pace. Yet despite the sometimes anguished, sometimes giddy reception that open source has provoked in the IT world, open source is not novel. It is not odd.

Open source is simply the software world’s mechanism for becoming just like everything else.

All the world’s a commodity—or a service to support and distribute commodities: this book that you are reading, the chair that supports you, the restaurant you will eat at tonight—everything—including, increasingly, ...