ITGumbo: spicing IT up

After peering through Matthew's post on Four open source startups to watch I thought it relevant to quantify what the emergence of such new entrants means within the context of the growth of the open source marketplace and its continued maturation as a technical force. Granted, none of the companies mentioned in this article have labored long enough as open source operations to provide the variety of substantiatve evidence of which elucidates the viability or the shortcomings of the model with regard to a specific market/product category. However, their early periods of existence reflect the current realities of the open source movement. Below are some observations I've made in my analysis of the four, individually and as a whole.

1. Open source continues to grow as a product development model, not just for commoditized software, but also for more cutting edge plays (i.e. Apatar, GravityZoo).
   
2. It looks as if the GPL will continue as a leading license of choice, even with the hype/speculation/misunderstanding surrounding GPL v3 (i.e. LoopFuse).
   
3. Dual licensing still remains a straight forward method of building revenue streams.
   
4. The open source model remains friendly to fledgling companies, as it is capable of reducing product development costs and shortening the sales cycle.
   
5. A layer of seasoned open source veterans with valuable experience running open source operations are being developed within mainstay open source companies...serving as fodder for the founders and executives of newer startups (i.e. LoopFuse).
   
6. The forge model is being increasingly viewed as a solid method of building growth around an open source software platform (i.e. Apatar).
   
7. Introducing open source disruption remains a tested technique of gaining entry as a smaller competitor into a given market (Untangle).
   
8. Clarity in messaging about strategy for leveraging open source is critical towards establishing credibility as more than an open source vendor in name (i.e. GravityZoo).
   
9. Open source products thrive on healthy product ecosystems which can be ramped up more quickly as a result of lowered frictions of adoption, use and distribution (all).
   
10. Since Small Medium Sized Business' (SMB) often benefit most readily from open source solutions, invigorating a strong channel is imperative in order to reach them (i.e. Apatar, LoopFuse, Untangle).

Only time will tell whether these four will be counted as a next generation of open source companies or if they will simply fade into the backdrop of an increasingly noisier and more competitive marketplace. Still at the current moment, all four companies are called to remain focused on building a sound foundation using the open source development model as a guide. Perhaps, I'll be able to look back at this post some years later and shake my head at how naive I was to underestimate the impact these and other new entrants would go on to have...who knows???

About the blogger: Alex Fletcher is lead industry analyst at Entiva Group Incorporated, a research and analyst firm which concentrates exclusively on the open source software industry. His main focus is working to help clients of all sizes formulate strategy and policy surrounding their use of open source software within the enterprise. Alex has prior experience as a consultant, software engineer and start-up founder. He can be reached at alex dot fletcher -at- entivagroup dot com.