Open Source [the] Business Results
Posted on July 30, 2007 by Guy Snir
Filed Under Open Source, Opinion, Business, Investment |
Thoughts about the process of starting a new company / product:
I read some articles about why you should choose Open Source (or not), when deciding on how to develop your next winning software solution. You can also find information covering different business strategies to follow in order to succeed in the Open Source industry (No test cases, just descriptions).
But I think that the most powerful move to encourage more entrepreneurs to choose the Open Source path will be having successful and unsuccessful Open Source ventures “Open Sourcing” their business results.
The first reaction I expect you to have, before I elaborate on the idea, is “but…”, and this is a natural reaction. Some of my first objections to myself (??) were:
- I might be helping my competition with giving out secrets of the trade.
- My investors will not be happy with exposing our internal financial data.
- What is in it for me?
- If the data is not flattering this can hurt my goals / future.
- Fill in the blank…
Although this is a raw idea, and still needs to be developed, I have thought of a few things that, in my opinion, could bring value to the Open Source market:
- Real life data and success stories can assist more companies with raising funds (by having the investors more educated and confidant in this model).
- People who still believe the FUD can see the information and decide on their own.
- New companies or products in development might be persuaded to go Open.
- YOU could learn and improve your business.
My initial thoughts are of creating a community of Open Source businesses, that can share their “Source Code” - their business practices and results, other members in the community could create a “Fork” and build a more personally suitable concept on top of existing ones, “Bug Fixes” could be suggested, in an attempt to improve current business, and so on.
I think that the main barrier to such a thing would be data privacy (and breaching laws / contracts). A solution could be to create the community in a Wesabe style, where data is shared, commented on and benefited by the community, without associating the data to a specific member.
If you have more suggestions or ideas how this could be elaborated, please share!
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2 Responses to “Open Source [the] Business Results”
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The views expressed on this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
hey, i was recently received a private beta invite to spendview.com - a site that allows users to consolidate and analyze their accounts. From what i am told, the site will allow users to categorize , share, and comment on vendors, without associating the data to a specific member. Other members will be able to benefit from the community’s knowledge.
Hey,
Thanks for the link!
From the looks of it, spendiew.com seems to be similar to Wesabe, which is more for personal finance.
I was thinking of something more corporate oriented.
Guy