Open Source Marketplace: ideas in action, the SugarCRM case
SugarCRM has announced that over 233 applications, extensions and modules are currently available on SugarExchange, and more than 7,000 transactions have occurred since October 2006, when the software marketplace was launched.
Marketplace by Troy B Thompson
The SugarExchange products listed in the press release are almost all proprietary, with the exception of Insideview and Scalix. As a matter of fact many SugarExchange’s Providers are imitating SugarCRM’s approach, keeping proprietary their extensions and plug-in. It is worth to notice that Sugar Portal for Mambo and Asterisk VoiceRD Integration, just to name two of the most popular this week, are not following this path, being both released open source. Upselling from the open source version to a more feature-rich version might be not easy.
First movers can take advantage of positive externalities – SugarCRM Announces 1,000 Customers and 1,000,000 Open Source Downloads – but this is not an option for all.
Talking about participation John Roberts, SugarCRM CEO, said:
The strong provider participation rates on SugarExchange validate the appeal of SugarCRM to both commercial as well as open source developers. Independent Software Vendors can leverage SugarCRM’s strong customer growth rate and offer complete, integrated solutions to commercial and open source users of SugarCRM.
Considering how well is going SugarExhcange I believe that SourceForge Marketplace has very good chance. By the way SourceForge has recently announced that has embedded Krugle’s search engine, a code search engine for developers similar to the famous koder.
Roberto Galoppini and 
greatswami are discussing.
greatswami 1:58 am on April 15, 2007 Permalink
I purchased the full VoiceRD integrated appliance from the company. GUI full of bugs and poorly designed interface. LDAP database makes it difficult to operate and gain help from the very active asterisk/trixbox community. There are hardly any active discussions on the company’s wiki and they take for ever to respond to questions. No documentation coupled with no support whatsoever from the company even though I spent thousands on the system. Additionally, they promised 24/7 monitoring/support agreement from Novell but after 4 months of waiting they were unable to provide. If you decide to purchase a complete system from them make sure you test out first, but I would recommend staying away.
Roberto Galoppini 6:17 pm on April 17, 2007 Permalink
Thanks for your comments, I would like to hear a feedback from Asterisk VoiceRD Integration’s authors also.