Innovation is the key behind open source business models

Excellent commentary on next generation open source business models by Yves de Montcheuil. The following are some excerpts from his opinion piece. "The first 'billion dollar baby' of open source was MySQL, when Sun bought the company for $1 billion. At that time, Techcrunch headline was: Sun Picks Up MySQL For $1 Billion; Open Source Is A Legitimate Business Model.”

"Fast forward to today. Red Hat just became the second billion dollar open source baby. Of course, they are the first billion-dollar-revenue open source vendor."

"As open source vendors were becoming mainstream, they also started to lose some of their differentiation."

"In order to continue to strive, open source vendors must continue to be different. One way open source has been retaining this differentiation is through innovation."

"Today, building an open source company without a strong, clear innovation path, one that creates a real technology disruption, would be doomed to failure."

"It’s no longer about being mainstream. It’s about the next generation of innovation."