In a normal proprietary software company this means you've disqualified someone that isn't a customer in the pipeline, in the open source corporate world, I believe they sit in a different process. Instead of a manufacturing metaphor (pipelines) we need a more organic social metaphor to track success and growth of the community. Lead generation is a measure of community engagement. You want to grow your community. Customers will self-qualify.

Time and time again is that the best- in-class open source companies knowingly or unknowingly followed this formula: D x CR x ASP = $$ (or € £)

Collaborative development projects have opened the door to much wider input than is the case in a closed development environment with subsequent improvements in price and performance. Open source reduces R&D costs, increases productivity, improves efficiency, facilitates interoperability and encourages innovation.

Let's concentrate on a very specific aspect: making money out of open source projects' participation, building proprietary software leveraging open source ones.

And the best open source license is …

while we expect Open-Core to remain a significant business model for 'pure-play' open-source companies, and we expect to see more software licensed under the Apache license, we don't see the two as being directly related.

Why should software developers who create local customisations of open source software take the further step of submitting their changes back to the main project? While it takes more effort initially, having these changes integrated in the project becomes efficient in the long run: local modifications need not be re-applied at every upgrade, and the project takes over their maintenance. Also, by building up a record of useful contributions, one can gain influence in shaping the project's future.

Talk about turning lemons into lemonade. The new Tr.im may be the most exciting thing to happen in URL shortening since now market leader Bit.ly itself launched.

A recent IDC study reveals that worldwide revenue from open source software (OSS) will grow at a 22.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $8.1 billion by 2013. This forecast is considerably higher than 2008 for three reasons: (1) the bottom-up list used to calculate the revenue has expanded through an exhaustive effort to include more projects in this forecast; (2) open source software has had a much higher level of acceptance over the past 12 months than previously expected, and; (3) the economy accelerated the uptake and use of open source software in the closing months of 2008.

Free online courses, Wiki universities, Facebook-style tutoring networks -- American higher education is changing.

highlight some differences of OSS business models in regards of the software stack being exploited: either a CCII (Common Content & Information Infrastructure) or a CEVA (Content Enabled Vertical Applications)

The Apache community not only managed to survive and grow, while many other open source communities faced troubles or even disappeared, but furthermore Apache has become a real institution and is well-known and respected within the IT area. As a community brand, Apache offers many of the benefits described above. Community members do not only respond with high loyalty towards the brand, but furthermore serve as passionate brand evangelists.

In a speech recorded in December 2008, Eben Moglen speaks about the origins of copyright and patents from a historical perspective.

Eben Moglen discusses in depth the origins of the copyright and patent system, and how Free Software interacts with that history.

IBM proved long ago that it's possible to build billion-dollar businesses with Apache. But SpringSource is the first start-up to suggest that Apache isn't simply a way for big companies to create complements to proprietary cores. Sometimes an Apache core is worth something, too. At least $420 million, by SpringSource's reckoning.

Should we dump all evangelism for Linux and Open Source? Should we immediately stop promoting it? Hardly. We simply need to go about it in a new way. Grab a ruler, pull out your behive hairdo and pick up an apple, because the new way to make converts is.....education.

Creating FOSS Allies Through Volunteerism

The Open Source Definition is somewhat limited in policing the use of the term. It seems steps are being taken to address that.

In just over three years, four companies that Fenton invested in while at his current firm Benchmark Capital, or previous one, Accel Partners, have sold for a combined $1.6 billion. Fenton, who ranks on Forbes' Midas List at No. 50, was an investor in JBoss Inc. (sold to Red Hat Inc. for $350 million), Zimbra Inc. (acquired by Yahoo Inc. for $350 million), and XenSource Inc. (bought by Citrix Systems Inc. for $500 million). So what are the ingredients he looks for in a potential open-source investment?

Given Oracle's aggressive discounts, including its willingness to buy out the remainder of a customer's Red Hat contract, as Gartner reports, one would think that it would be flying high. But it's not. OEL has roughly 2 percent market share, compared to Red Hat's 60 percent market share. Enterprises aren't stupid: if Oracle's Linux story were compelling, they'd be buying. But they're clearly not.

"Cloud computing" (today's terminology for an old concept) represents a combination of factors that are accelerating the transition of common IT activities from a product to a service based economy.