Thursday, April 17, 2008

MySQL: hybrid is the way to go

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the debate about the best open source business model is still open. We are done with licenses, finally. However, the question on how we make (more) money, while keeping our open source soul clean, is still there. And it might not go away soon...

Latest debate: MySQL alleged idea of having non-open source components in its Enterprise Edition. Whooo, scary...

Marten and Zack might have made a marketing mistake: leaking the news out at the end of their conference, where they did not talk about it, was probably not done on purpose... In particular, just after the Sun acquisition, with all eyes focused on how opensourcey they still are.

Nevertheless, this move is clearly into the right direction. The only way to make significant money and keep open source alive and kicking: an hybrid model with open source and proprietary components. My model involves also a separation of the open source community from the buyers community ("do not upsell your community"), but it is a model hard to pull off for MySQL, since they sell only to the enterprise... Anyway, that's a need for them, or as Marten wrote: "we believe we have to be more pragmatic than dogmatic. Call it a necessary evil if you like"...

I know Matt disagrees with me on this, but he is wrong (hey, he was convinced Arsenal would win the Premier League this year... It tells you something about his ability to predict things he cares about :-))

I can't believe a pure model based on support is going to scale to the one billion dollars we always talk about. A pure support and services model works for a while, then customers get comfortable with what they have and pull the plug on it. Your best customers leave you because they are too satisfied... It is sad but inevitable. Maybe you can make it with an operating system, but if you move up the stack you are screwed...

Bottom line: Marten and Zack are going in the right direction. Stop screaming about it. They are as opensourcey as you and me. But they need to keep open source (and their business) alive and kicking.