I am a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of MindTouch, a popular open source business application and collaboration platform used by millions. Read more.
Being a nineteen year fan of Nine Inch Nails I was thoroughly pleased to read MindTouch, the company I CEO for, included in a C|Net article about Trent Reznor’s use of an Open Core business model.
The article cites a recent post I wrote at the MindTouch blog about the MindTouch Community. The Open Core business model works well in yielding exponential growth by building and engaging community. I write about this too in an article titled: “Open Source Magic Carpet Defies Recession”.
I wrote this week at the MindTouch blog about the success of MindTouch and I provided a brief summary of how MindTouch is defying the recession.
Yes, this is the real revenue graph for MindTouch. I know what you’re thinking: What happened in Q2 2008?
Good question. I will get to this in a moment. There is a lot to learn from this graph like this. Beginning with MindTouch investing the first year solely in creating an install base and developer community. The first thing we launched was our developer community (July, 2006 at OSCON) and for the first year MindTouch did not bother trying to sell anything. We did manage to generate a surprising amount of revenue selling support without having a formal product in place and we began formally selling support subscriptions near the end of 2007. By the end of Q1 2008 MindTouch software was being distributed about 5,000 times a day and we turned our attention toward building the business. In Q2 2008 we began experimenting with a commercial edition.
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via Open Source Magic Carpet Defies Recession | MindTouch, Inc Blog.
I wrote two blog posts at the MindTouch blog today that I think are of import. The first is about Open Core models. The second post is about my belief in open source.
80% Of The Functionality For 500% Of The Cost
The title of this blog post could be: Why open source matters to me, but I like the former because it’s racier and I hear that gets readers. Anyway, I was prompted to write this because of a comment and question posed me by a MindTouch open source community member that really is best answered/satisfied by me explaining this and also sharing my ideas about Open Core. At any rate, to answer why open source matters to me I really have to respond from two distinct perspectives. First I’ll answer it on a personal level and then as the CEO of an enterprise software company.
Here is my “Aaron hat”. I received my degree in Computer Science from UNC-Chapel Hill where I did pretty much all my course work, like most CS students, on an open source stack. I’ve helped to start several non-profits tasked with bridging the digital divide in under-served and predominately minority communities where I primarily used an open source stack. I’ve owned a couple small businesses in which I benefited a great deal by building on, guess what, primarily an open source stack. So, let me tell you on a personal level I have very strong convictions about open source. There are many reasons, but I will present you my top two.
