The Open Source Economist

The proliferation of open-source software into the technology industry has had an important effect on how people work. Open-source companies often stood at the forefront of remote-first work, and now, with the COVID-19 pandemic, open-source communities are leading the way with years developing blueprints that are now helping other companies. Alongside this development, open-source software has led to the creation of jobs that did not exist in the technology field at its conception, such as developer evangelists, developer advocate, full-time OSS contributors, and OS community managers. In this episode, Christie explains what these jobs are, how they have come up, and the skills that each requires. Then, we speak with Chelsea Simpson, an expert in making teams work better and happier in the enterprise, to give our open-source communities a direction for solving some of our problems. In the current disruption of work, there are things that all sides of the industry need to learn from each other. 

In a groundbreaking acquisition, IBM acquired Red Hat, a company that open-sources all of its products, for $34 billion in 2019. This changed the paradigm of open-source acquisitions, after all, this meant that IBM saw value in a purchase of software that could have been in the open to work with for this major technology player's highly qualified engineers. This begs the question: what is a company buying when they acquire a company that has a business model surrounding creating and maintaining open-source software? In this episode, we answer this question from two perspectives — what it is like to be acquired from Zach Tirrell, and what requirements the company sought from Chris Lema, who was involved in the acquisition of Zach's product. We discuss the determinants that will make an open-source software attractive for buyers, and we also discuss the human and emotional experience of selling an open-source software company. 

In the third part of our examination of some of the business models being powered by open-source software, we explore the space of the digital experience platform. One of the obvious advantages of a platform — open-source or proprietary — is the promise of a seamless experience to accomplish a goal. When it comes to open-source software, collaboration in the open can mean fragmentation. The digital experience platform (DXP) concept seeks to marry the flexibility of open-source with the ease of use and practicality of a more integrated platform. We discuss Altis DXP with its creators, Tom Wilmot and Noel Tock. In this episode, we discuss the problems that a DXP is seeking to solve, the attention of large enterprise on the DXP model, and the conversation surrounding DXP's contributions to open-source software. 

In the second part of the three part series, we examine another business model of the open-source software economy: the productized service. Unlike the models to support commercial open-source software, productized services take the need for open-source software to be implemented on behalf of clients, and creates repeatable and scalable ways to do so. In a productized service, the consulting model has been flipped on its head: instead of tailoring the service to the client, we tailor the client to the service. Christie is joined by Joe Howard, the CEO of WPBuffs, a productized services company that focuses on WordPress websites. They discuss the facts, but they also discuss the motivations behind starting a company like this, and running it to sustain values and priorities in life. 

Get Dr. David Orozco's book, Business Law and Strategy, here. Or connect with him via his Twitter.

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