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From Many Models To A Few?

In my last post I talked a bit about an ongoing effort to build a taxonomy of open source business models. As with open source licenses, one could argue that over time there will be a consolidation of business models, too -- so if that does happen, which ones will lead the pack?

From the list in question, three stand out the most by virtue of being the most broadly or visibly adopted: dual licensing, open core, and support providers. These are the three business methods that get the lion's share of discussion and adoption from what I've seen, and which lend themselves to being the most used if only because they've yielded the most visibly reliable results.

But are they likely to become the only ways to go? The question comes to mind because of the corresponding narrowing-down in OSS licensing: the great swath of licenses out there (sometimes competing, conflicting, and contradictory) is winnowing itself down to a select, easily-identified few. Most of that comes from simple trial and error: we all tried out different ways of licensing, and found after a while that the vast majority of what we might want to accomplish could be covered by a few basic approaches: GPL, Apache, MIT / copyleft / public domain, etc.

If there's to be a corresponding narrowing of commercial open source approaches, it may not be for a bit yet. The reason we've started to see such an aggressive winnowing of licensing schemes is because the work done in this regard has been happening for a lot longer, and with extremely fierce and contentious discussion, than commercial open source providers have been doing their thing. Give commercial OSS a few more years, time enough for the different approaches to show their strengths through good times and bad, and the field may narrow down.

I say "may" because from what I've seen, I don't think the business models are going to narrow down to the extent that licensing will. One basic reason for this stands out: the exact choice of business model tends to only affect the business in question, but the choice of licensing affects everyone.

If anything, I'd expect the variety of commercial OSS models to broaden, not narrow down with time -- both to reflect the variegated demands of the market, and the ingenuity of those making OSS into something we all use.

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