Open Source Company

Description

Michael Widenius:

"So what would then be a good definition for calling onces company "an open source company"?

I would like to suggest the following one:

1) You have to be a company that produces software. 2) All software the company delivers to its users must be available to everyone under an open source license. This includes all server code that is required to run and use the software.

In addition it would be good if the company could publicly state that all code they produce and release in the future will be under an open source license, but personally I would not require the company's to have to do this as some companies would have a hard time to do this." (http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-is-open-source-company.html)

Check out the strong challenges to the above definition in the comment field below the article!

Discussion

Michael Widenius:

"To me it's clear that just because some of your product(s) is available under an open source license, you can't claim to be an open source company, as that would make the term meaningless. Under such a definition even Microsoft would be an open source company, as some of their products are now available as open source.

SugarCRM and Eucalyptus are clearly 'open core' companies, not open source companies. While open core is somewhat better than closed source, open core products have all the same disadvantages as closed source if you depend on a single feature of the closed parts for your business. In this case:

- You can't change, modify, port or redistribute the code. - You can't fix bugs or extend the code. - You are locked to the platforms that the vendor provides - You are locked to one vendor.

In other words, the product as a whole should be regarded as a closed source product." (http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-is-open-source-company.html)