European Open Source Projects: Qualipso deliverables on business models (part II)
QualiPSo - the ever largest Open Source initiative funded by the European Commission - is making public its first results, and I just started to analyze them.
The goal of the project is “to define and implement technologies, procedures and policies to leverage the Open Source Software development current practices to sound and well recognised and established industrial operations”.
QualiPSo includes 7 research and development domains (QualiPSo Competence Centres, business models, next generation forge, trustworthy results and process, information management, interoperability, legal issues), articulated in 10 work areas.
Today I read the deliverable “State of the art concerning business models for systems comprising open source software“, apparently the most promising result within the “business models” research area.
Calypso Cabaret by Sackerman519
Looking at the document as a whole, basically it is an essay of pretty known and old articles, like the Seven open source business strategies for competitive advantage, by John Koenig, and the mentioned many times “Economics of Open Source” of my buddy Carlo Daffara, plus some minor citations. Not a single new business model, they just mentioned Open Source (?) Franchising, not exploiting it any further.
I must admit I learned about Sunil Joshi citations, but I honestly expected to find something more than things grasped around the net, sometimes even without double check. For example they happened to cite the Orixo consortium, so I guess they didn’t take a chance to talk with a representative, neither to read Gianugo advising on using consortia nor looking at the Orixo’s events section. On the contrary I didn’t read a mention of ZEA or Open Source Consortium, just to name two of them. I would warmly recommend them to add these, at least.
I found it auto-referential just as the already mentioned deliverable D2.1.2 , since chapter 3 “BIG INDUSTRY OSS BUSINESS MODELS CASE STUDIES” is only about 4 QualiPSo’s members.
Last but not least, chapter 4 “SME OSS BUSINESS MODELS CASE STUDIES” results to be a list of cases collected by the official sites of those firms, mostly cut&pasting public information available, not a deep research I would say.
QualipSO seems following a Ferengi’s rule: Sell the sizzle, not the steak, I hope they will come out with something interesting soon..
Technorati Tags: commercial open source, research, public funded, QualiPSo, IST
