OSBC Wrapup

One of the great perks of my job is that I get to attend a lot of conferences. Most of the time they are PHP conference and I get to hang with the coolest development community on earth. Sometimes, I get to go to a conferences that is a little out of my comfort zone, OSBC was just such a conference.

The Open Source Business Conference is put on each year by InfoWorld in San Francisco, CA, US. It is a gathering of entrepreneurs looking to capitalize (or as they say in the biz, monetize) on Open Source software. Being a developer at heart, even if not in practice these days, I assumed that where there is FOSS, there are developers; was I ever out of my element.

The conference is a business conference as it’s name implies. This is not a bad thing in any way but it is a bit of a culture shock. It was also very interesting to attend some of the session that were put on by developer/entrepreneurs. You can tell that some of them were walking a real fine line between releasing their entire product as OS and going all commercial. Some succeeded in walking this tight-rope, others failed.

I think the best session I attended was “Learning from Zimbra: Creating a Sustainable Open Source Project and a Profitable Business” led by Scott Dietzen. I’ve followed Zimbra since they announced and have always been fascinated by the project. I’ve always felt that they walked the tight-rope well by releasing a full featured project, useful and valuable in it’s own right, as open source. Then they released valuable add-ons as their business. Even in the early days of the Zimbra community, there was very little pressure to upgrade or purchase the add-ons. It really felt like an open source project.

Other projects at the show did not walk the tight-rope nearly as well. One project that claimed to be the major competitor to a $100,000/year commercial product, released about 1/2 of it’s feature set as open source and you had to pay to get the rest. The project is that without the full feature set, they cannot in any way compete with the commercial offering. Their open source offering was more like a free trial that you could test drive, but if you really wanted the product to be useful, you had to pony up the bucks. (No mention was made as to whether the code, once paid for, was open for your inspection) The problem I had with these projects is that they really don’t espouse the open source mindset. Open Source isn’t a mindset in these companies, it’s a marketing gimmik. Don’t take this as I’m against the commercialization of open source. However, several speakers reiterrated that to be successful your open source project has to be stand-alone and useful in it’s own right.

Another great session I went to was “Tailoring an Open Source Business Model for Your Business” led by Rob Bearden. The thing I love about this session was that Ron drove home the fact that if you don’t have an active community around your open source project, and you don’t listen when that community talks, you will never succeed. I believe that community is the reason PHP is as popular as it is today.

All in all it was a interesting conference. Zend was one of the very few PHP related companies, the majority of the projects I saw presented were Java based with a few being Ruby based.

I would recommend this conference to any member of management of an open source company. It’s a great way to meet and network with your peers. If you have an idea for a project that you think can be turned into a company or if you have a project that you now want to monetize, this is a great place to start.