I have a long history in the open source software business, but as of two years ago I started to talk about a new development model called community source.
It was slow going at first. No one really grasped the idea until about a year ago when Gartner’s Brian Prentice defined the model and called out Collaborative Software Initiative as the first vendor to provide community source services.
Since then, more folks have written about it, and our company has been able to provide examples of the model in action - through TriSano in the government space and through our work with SIG in financial services, among others.
What remains confusing to many is the difference between open source software and community source software.
Open source software is typically software that is developed by a community of individual contributors; although, in most commercial open source software companies, the company employs many of the key contributors. The software is freely available to download under the General Public License, or customers can buy a subscription with services and support.
An open source software project is usually started and gains momentum because a handful of developers are passionate about the project and are the “subject matter experts” - the people who are experts in what needs to be included in the software and who will be using the software.
This is where community source software really differs.
There are large number of business applications that are commonly used across companies and organizations in any given industry. But, that handful of developers passionate about those particular applications doesn’t exist. And, the subject matter experts aren’t developers anyway: they are doctors and nurses in the public health space; and public officials in the online voting industry; and graphic designers in entertainment; and bankers in financial services, for example.
Community source combines the best of both worlds: the traditional development model (largely considered the proprietary model) and the open source software model. The results transcend “us vs. them” and include significant cost savings, better software, platform and vendor flexibility like never seen before with enterprise applications.
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