Recently I’ve seen a lot of references to Gartner’s report  “Predicts 2009: The Evolving Open-Source Software Model” which includes this key finding:

“By 2012, at least 50% of direct commercial revenue attributed to open-source products or services will come from projects under a single vendor's patronage.”

I’m not buying it.

As of right now, the vast majority of open source revenue comes from Linux, which is not under a single vendor’s patronage.  Even with the growth of commercial open source projects that are under a single vendor’s patronage, much of the most used open source (think: most Apache projects) is not.  Many companies, from systems integrators to support providers like OpenLogic, will derive open source revenue from support and services around those “community projects".

I agree with Gartner that the number of new open source projects that are backed by a single vendor is growing, but I think we are a lot more than 3 years away from the point where those projects will represent 50% of all open source revenue.

With news of the SpringSource acquisition by VMWare still reverberating around the blogosphere and twittersphere, many in the open source world are wondering whether VMWare will now be another large open source company.“Being an open source company” is partly about technology (providing products under open source licenses)  and contributing to the open source community.  However, more importantly, being an open source company also means a certain way of doing business.  These open source business practices typically include some of the following:

• Providing an order of magnitude value of advantage over proprietary software
• Selling under a subscription model
• Open communication with users and communities on product roadmaps, bugs, and other business practices
• Avoiding practices that lock customers in to certain technologies

I believe VMWare and SpringSource when they say will continue to contribute to the open source licensed projects, because it will be in their best business interest to keep millions of developers using Spring.

I’m a little more skeptical that they will embrace some or all of the business practices of open source.  It can be very difficult for large companies to make those changes – for both philosophical and financial reasons.  Although the current intent may be to continue some of those open source practices in the “SpringSource division”, over time the demands, complexities and politics of the larger company may start to erode those practices if they remain distinct from the business practices of VMWare as a whole.

I’ll be watching the outcome with interest and hoping that VMWare can take on some of these open source business practices and become an open source company.