Making money with open source, Part 2: Only one chasm

OpenITWorks CEO Michael Grove contends that it is a mistake to think of commercial open source as its own business model. Instead, open source is one of many possible means to an end of making a single software business model successful -- that of selling value to customers through software. Businesses should focus their strategic planning on how to best monetize their value propositions, through open source or something else.

In this series of articles, we highlight two industry experts who have differing views of what it means to be a commercial open source business and how to be successful. Bernard Golden, CEO of Navica, an open source consultancy, and Michael Grove, CEO of OpenITWorks, which focuses on helping IT organizations collaborate, are both recognized as industry experts and thought leaders.

In point-counterpoint style, Bernard discusses in Part 1 how commercial open source is its own business model and is unique in that it faces two "chasms" (from Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm), one involving broad adoption of the free versions of product, and the other involving converting a significant subset of adopters to paying customers.

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