Open source is the stealth fad: it’s all over the place, and has been for years, but it seems to surprise so many people even now, in 2007. One of the problems is that unlike almost every new technology ever introduced, people have a very hard time understanding how you can use open source to generate profit–because how can anything be "happening" and "new" if it isn’t going to make someone some money.
Though I’ve written about how to generate profits with open source software (see Open Source and the Profit Motive, for example), I’m neither the first to do so, nor will I be the last. In fact, I just read Top Five Open Source Business Models You Never Heard Of, and it got me thinking about open source and profits, again.
The thing to keep in mind with open source is that it’s not a technology or product: it’s a new way of doing business with software. The millions of different companies go about their business in millions of different ways, each of them using different tools, different processes, different people, different vendors and different customers.
As it happens, more and more of those businesses are incorporating open source software into the way they do business: some of them are replacing proprietary software on their production systems with open source software; some are replacing their own proprietary software products with open source (or publishing that proprietary software as open source); some are marketing products or services to open source software users; some are building new products or services on top of open source software.
The thing to remember is that even though pundits, advocates, and random members of the blogosphere may imagine a dozen or so different possible models for creating profit from open source software, the most interesting and compelling business models will undoubtedly come out of nowhere.
It’s instructive to look to history. Before Yahoo!, there was no Internet search business; when everyone thought Yahoo! had the business tied up, up popped Google.
So, will the first/next super-huge open source success be a software vendor like Red Hat or MySQL? Or will it be a company that incorporates open source into its product line, like IBM? Or will it be a company that depends on open source software to run its infrastructure, like Google?
My money is bet on some little startup, maybe taking shape right now in some coffee shop or home office, that will turn the whole business upside down. And whatever it is, it will be new and different and completely unexpected–but completely delightful in its novelty and utility.