Sustainable Software Initiative!
September 04, 06 by BharaniI landed up on the following website while I was doing a Market Analysis for Enterprise Search Solution.
Jahia offers a product suite with solutions for Enterprise Content Management, Corporate Portal, Document Management, Search Engine, Powerful Indexer, Caching, Colloboration Tools and Business Process Management Tools.
They are offering almost all the features that we are trying to develop but in a slightly different approach. Anyway, I liked Jahia not just for what they offer…but more for their effort to promote a Sustainable Business Model blending the benefits of Open source software and proprietary software. They have instituted a Sustainable Software Initiative (SSI), a non-profit organisation dedicated to promote this business model.
The basic idea behind this initiative is to provide the source code for free and to allow anyone to freely modify the code. But the model charges a licence fee based on the intent and the extent-of-the-intent of use! (commercial or professional reasons). The developers who contribute to the development of the project will be fairly rewarded through stock-options or shares or discounting the licence fee! Jahia is essentially trying to curb out free-riders in the software community: The passive people who use the free software for commercial purpose without contributing anything back! Jahia calls them as “Technology free-riders”.
Bottomline:
“So, you want to enjoy the benefits of high-quality open-source? then give back something useful to the community. Don’t be just passive consumers…You can earn your right to be passive for a specified Fee..”
The movement seems to focus mainly on eliminating the Technology-Free riders. I was just reflecting this principle on what we currently do. I have been wanting my team to contribute back to the community…Time to take some concrete steps towards that…
