On September 13, 2006, Barry Klawans, chief technology officer, JasperSoft, Inc. (JasperSoft) gave a talk in Mountain View, CA on open source challenges and opportunities.
He predicted that in two years, open source will be an offering for most software providers versus a business in itself.
JasperSoft, a business intelligence company, was founded with the combination of a proprietary development with an open source project that was highly downloaded on SourceForge.net.
One challenge of open source is the variety of licensing models. To name a few: GNU GPL, LGPL, Mozilla, Apache, IBM, BSD. Further, there is an ever changing standard to these licenses. For instance, the GNU GPL is in the process of being revised.
JasperSoft uses the duel license model. There is the question of why a customer would want to pay for something that is offered for free. Some customers do not understand the requirements of open source license agreements and prefer commercial licenses where they are more ensured to comply. Also, licenses such as the GNU GPL have viral source code distribution effects that are not compatible with the strategies of companies that obtain products in order to embed them with proprietary applications for commercial distribution.
A commercial version may also provide for more predictability and stability because the vendor is able to support releases that are not evolved quickly.
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