It’s great news for the open source industry that MySQL has been bought by a major enterprise player for $1billion. If you’ve worked with open source software you know it can work in the Enterprise environment just as well as any closed source software. Maybe we weren’t sure if there was a business model that made sense for the software, but now the MySQL purchase highlights a visible exit strategy:
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on a very low budget develop great software that people want to use
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make it easily available
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develop a community
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soon enough your software will get into the enterprise – try and enable free feedback mechanisms to keep track of who is using the software
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try and earn money from support/pro services to pay the bills (i know this is much easier said than done)
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eventually one day you’ll find lots of Fortune 500 companies using your software
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when that happens big existing IT players buy you up for a billion
So in a totally specualtive mood who could be next down the road? Digium? SugarCRM? Nagios? I bet you haven’t heard of Nagios but I’m willing to wager 8/10 network administators sure have, along with established software companies such as Tivoli and CA.
