Open Source AIR Alternative: Appcelerator, an interview with Jeff Kunz
Appcelerator – the company founded in 2006 by Jeff Haynie and Nolan Wright, that took a first round in 2008 from Storm Ventures – recently released Titanium preview, an open source platform for building desktop applications using Web technologies.
At the open source think tank I met Jeff Kunz, formerly Olliance Group partner and now VP of Business Development at Appcelerator, and I asked him some background about Appcelerator and its business model.
Appcelerator started developing Entourage, a RIA framework built on a messaging architecture. In early 2008 started the creation of Titanium – open source desktop application development platform using web technologies.
How will Appcelerator profit from its technology?
Core technology will always be completely open source under apache 2. No dual license of community/enterprise edition. Monetization will come from a suite of cloud services that all developers will use to productize and monetize their apps quickly and inexpensively. These service, available a la carte in a freemium to premium usage based fee model, will be:
- Packaging: automated windows, mac, and linux package generation
- Distribution: linkable url for downloads and hosting
- Testing: automated app functionality testing
- Analytics: micro/macro level analytics regarding app and function usage and downloads
- Ads: embedded ad api’s and services
- E-commerce: full app store services
Appcelerator is taking community development seriously, knowing that outside of the company interesting ideas and concepts take place they launched a community-based contest. You can follow them on twitter to know more about the initiative. Community voiting for the best application will open Monday.
There are no commercial information sheets yet, and I am glad Jeff shared some thoughts about their business approach. I look forward to ask more in few months, and see what happens at Appcelerator.
Among top download locations worldwide United States is the first, followed by Germany, UK and India. Is one of the first time I see India so high positioned, matter for (development) thoughts, I’d say. Italy is the seventh location, wondering if anyone I know is experiencing using Titanium instead of Adobe AIR. All in all its cross platform support for Windows, Mac and Linux plus Flash and Silverlight support for free seems a compelling open source offering.
Roberto Galoppini, and 
Open Source AIR Alternative: Appcelerator, an interview with Jeff Kunz | Open Hacking 6:39 pm on April 8, 2009 Permalink
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[…] Open Source AIR Alternative: Appcelerator, an interview with Jeff Kunz Appcelerator is taking community development seriously, knowing that outside of the company interesting ideas and concepts take place they launched a community-based contest. You can follow them on twitter to know more about the initiative. Community voitng for the best application will open Monday. […]
Trevor Cape 12:05 am on April 21, 2009 Permalink
Hi Roberto,
My name is Trevor and I work at Appcelerator. I happened upon your article written about Appcelerator and your interview with our VP of Biz Dev Jeff regarding Appcelerator’s business model. It is refreshing to see something written about our business strategy and how we plan to make money. Most of the articles that I read are written solely about the technical side of our services. It is always good to get people on both sides of the spectrum involved in discussing and talking about what we do, from both a technical standpoint and also a business, monetary standpoint. To show our appreciation the Appcelerator team would like to send you some cool Appcelerator “swag”(a titanium t-shirt and an Appcelerator wristband). If you would like that, please send me your mailing address and I will make sure to get them to you.
Thanks,
Trevor
Roberto Galoppini 2:22 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
Hi Trevor,
I am glad you appreciated my blog post, I can tell you I wrote it hoping you would have offered me the Appcelerator “swag”. 🙂
On a more serious line of thought, Jeff was very open to talk about your business strategy, and I was happy to share it with my readers.
Gary Richmond (gear) 's status on Friday, 17-Jul-09 15:39:29 UTC - Identi.ca 4:39 pm on July 17, 2009 Permalink
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