Compromised

Open core provides a security blanket for "open source" software companies. Its advocates claim that "to truly disrupt software categories where proprietary vendors dominate (and to deliver large new leaps in customer value), the open core model currently stands alone in its opportunity to deliver community progress and commercial success." The success of JBoss and Cygnus would suggest otherwise.

In an article entitled "It's OK to be an open-source flip-flopper", Matt Asay says "we need to spend less time fetishising open-source politics over customer pragmatism. We should be a lot less Richard Stallman, in other words, and much more Eric Raymond/Open Source Initiative." But the strange truth is that the proven models, the 'open source' companies that have worked, have been those that have resisted compromise, and have taken their developer communities with them.

Tarus Balog of OpenNMS offers a different perspective. "Open core software is a fad", he says. "I have no doubt that it will make some individuals wealthy, but pure open source is catching up and will eventually disrupt both the pure proprietary and open core proprietary software business models."

In this topsy-turvy world we inhabit, where terms such as open source, free software and interoperability are often misused and confused, 'pure open source' is of course something close to free software, and OpenNMS is licensed under the GPL.