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Let us say from the outset that nobody in their right mind would put forward the below assertion...right? To say it would lodge one into a storm of ridicule - nothing can stop this awesome force. So it would seem. Well, we don't mind throwing an idea forward that most haven't considered - something we have been prone to do in the past - and guess what? Some predictions have hit the nail on the head - sometimes years later...we still have a few years left in us. Also, this prediction doesn't mean we don't love and support Open Source - quite the opposite - our lives have been shaped for the better because of it. Nonetheless, the numerous transforming, evolutionary forces have started to grey-out the original targets and reasons for Open Source...
Open Source has been the greatest movement in IT for so many people and companies since its birth not so long ago. Ever since Linus Torvalds released Linux as the greatest challenge to the established OS players - things have really heated up.
Since its early days, Open Source has matured, evolved and developed as not only a mass of technologies, but also as business models. The original movement was surely to hit out at M$ and put the new burgeoning world of server-side computing back into the hands of the hobbyists, hackers and bootstrapping developers - just as BASIC and similar simple computer boards did in California 30 years ago..
Many companies have gotten into the movement by providing a "supported software" together with non-supported versions - such as RedHat Linux, Open-Xchange, Open Bravo, Funambol and others are doing.
After the OS had arrived, there also came scripting technology such as PHP, python, CGI, etc. Java had always been "owned" by Sun (until Oracle bought them out) - but was made available for anyone to develop with - and became a part of the Open Source movement. This provided a powerful server-side technology to build sturdy apps with. They also provided paid support services.
OK, so it has been 10+ years - and Linux may not have taken over the M$ Desktop monopoly - but it has done much more - it has enabled the existence of "CLOUD" and companies like Salesforce.com, Google, Amazon and many others that are driven by billions of dollars and do aim to take away some of the shine of the M$ Desktop dominance. Soon after, SaaS became the standard form of architecture for large-scale service delivery and coupled with the HTML5 technology that is becoming ever more powerful - we will eventually see many more replacements/substitutes for the Windows Desktop and various functionality. Salesforce really woke us all up to the power of SaaS.
Well-supported companies developing software have now begun to use a few different types of "Open Source" agreements that give them more flexibility to limit functionality - for revenue-earning purposes. Simply put - they are taking advantage of the years of work of the Open Source community and are now taking the results closer to a proprietory model. Maybe fair enough - maybe they also put a lot of effort into the Open Source they are leveraging. Our discussion here is not about fair or unfair - just saying it as we see it.
We will see more of Open Source becoming Closed Source and gradually shift along the commercial path to meet the original players it was designed to battle - but they will now meet on similar grounds. This makes sense for a number of reasons.
Firstly, with the major players such as M$, Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, Facebook, Apple, etc., going harder and harder at each other for the same customers and each aiming to bring out the next significant feature, this leaves every other player out there with a simple choice - get serious or stay as a hobbyist. How to get serious? Bring out a unique idea and/or technology and get some serious funding and go into battle. Otherwise, if your timing is right and the idea hits you and you can do something about it - bring out a simple, no-brainer technology that people will be willing to use and maybe pay for. If none of these, then the service or solution will simply not get traction nor will it have impact on the world. But that is OK - that is what hobbies are! - and there is still a bit of money in the non-virtual/cyber hobby industry - just have a look at all the plastic models!
The original dot-com days of "free stuff" was a momentary blitz in our collective memories - more for the fact that there was a lot of stuff that came out and was just very gimicky - not so much of it was of any lasting substance. However, some services really did hit it off - such as Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail (later bought by M$) and followed up by Google with Gmail. Communication is the no-brainer needed for all humans - and email is the original killer service.
Search became a hot topic when it became an important part of our "online life" - so now we are always expecting the quick-fix answers and immediate delivery that is offered by Google Search and others.
Secondly, the competetive forces are much more crushingly intense now than they ever were. How to use Internet technology is no big secret - and the above majors are very fast at either developing something in-house or consuming new tech they need (via buy-outs and mergers). A little bit of space may always be available where bootstrappers and hobbyists can at least make a significant feature that can be taken up and bought by the majors. Such as the person with that one brilliant, unique idea that can not be nurtured in a standard company setting and may even just be a random result of some incident or thought. This is the stuff that can't be ordered upon staff at any major company with guaranteed results. The small guy better get a patent to protect it, though!
Thirdly, the quality must be very high. People are now accustomed to high quality - same as delivery speeds and responses. Again, there is still some space for the individual designer to have some impact - but quite likely they will eventually be designing skins for the above majors' services.
Finally, the real cause - as is common since the early days of commerce - is due to scale. The scale is getting to be not just great for consumers and businesses - it is impacting price and competitiveness. There are various strategies to mixing this up - such as offering something free and charging for other parts. Google did this magnificently; Provide free search and listing, charge for ad space on the results pages, make billions and invest the revenue back into new free services, such as email, celendar, etc., that can be further developed and enhanced to offer for a nominal fee to businesses. Part of the reason why the "majors" are called "majors" is exactly due to the scale they have been able to accumulate. You might ask what the point is of even trying to develop a new email service to compete with Gmail!?
As the need to charge sooner for the technology becomes more apparent (stakeholders only care about money!), it means that any technology that has any value - and is unique to the majors' offerings - needs to be put into the market fast and at a price to get some return. Not many people invest in something with the expectation of no return.
This is where the accelerator effect kicks-in - where;
As more business and services start to follow the above pattern - and less becomes free due to the need to provide returns - and the required scale becomes so large and the required quality so high and the effective player numbers decrease due to the ability to maintain the required scale and quality - the rate of the change in terms of positive and negative effects will increase - and the ability to keep up with the majors will be extremely difficult or impossible - thereby increasing the reasons to not support the free Open Source projects that one can not feasibly be a part of and enjoy and that may appear to be a situation where the majors are simply taking advantage of the community's good will.
The free model approach has very limited value as there is already a saturated abundance of them available. It also means that the small players will definitely be left behind and the "community" out there will soon realise that the M$ target has now blurred to become all the majors - some even being descendents of their own efforts. If M$ is not really a target anymore - and all the other majors are making a heap of money and growing massive scale thanks to the Open Source Community's efforts - what now is the purpose of Open Source? If the community continues to make stuff for free just so the majors can continue to consume it and make heaps of money - where is the value to the community? What is the point? Why don't the majors just pay for it themselves? If it is so they can continue to provide free services to the average consumer - then maybe the Open Source agreements should be re-written to say exactly that. "We agree that by consuming the Open Source technology and by not directly paying for the development costs ourselves, we agree to set aside 10% of our revenue to provide free services to the community at large.."
Anyway, that is a topic for some time in the future maybe. Who knows - maybe Open Source will find another reason for being - or maybe the original reasons will evolve to become something different that meets the changing usage of it and the needs and wants of the users.
What we see are some pretty basic indications of how things are heating up and accelerating...
Large Data Centers consuming smaller ones.
Large CLOUD providers with multiple tightly integrated SaaS will consume single-entity apps and service providers. M$ is already starting to cannibalise its own server resellers' customers and migrating them to Azure and M$ Exchange services. At least M$ do play along with Hardware vendors to some extent, such as their partnership with Fujitsu to build their CLOUD infrastracture - so a little bit of shared business there. Google goes the white box way - building their own hardware, fully internally controlled on Google Linux and Java Script, XML, HTML5, etc. - thanks to Open Source! (But we don't forget that Google also supports the community a lot - and does provide free services still..)
Large SaaS Software providers will continuously add more chargable features - and the solution will eventually be integrated into one or more of the majors' infrastructures. After a service or technology has been proven, it will - without doubt - be bought out and merged directly into the majors' offerings - such as the various CRM and other services are being done with Google Apps. The new mantra will be - and already is - make it unique and cool enough so M$ or Goolge will buy it and then you are set. We don't often hear, "Hey y'all, let's compete with M$ and Google!". Not anymore, anyway...
- Google provides the best search vs. M$ buying and fully integrating Bing - still got a way to go M$!
- Google buys Doubleclick to supplement search-based ads - now truly a market leader...
- M$ buys Hotmail vs Yahoo! vs. Google's own Gmail
- Google buys Gizmo to convert to Google Voice vs M$ buys Skype to integrate into M$ Messenger
- Google buys Youtube for over $1 billion!
- Google releases Google Apps vs M$ going to Azure with Livedocs - web-based Office
- Google buys and releases Android vs. M$ Mobile vs. Apple iPhone
- more coming...
Who do they all want? You! Consumers and Businesses (Employees) - and their customers = You!