Open Source Value and the CMS Ecosystem

Black Duck Software recently released a report on how much the current open source codebase is worth, in terms of development costs and manpower. We caught up with their EVP of Marketing and Business Development, Peter Vescuso, to discuss the implications for the Content Management Systems community.

CMSWire: You talk in the report about using money saved by repurposing open source code toward innovation. Are there any examples that you can cite of companies that have already done this? What innovations do you see coming soon using open source as a jumping point?

VESCUSO: Innovation comes indirectly from using open source.

Just to be clear about this line of thought, if a development organization’s budget is $4 million for 2009, and they can find a way to use open source to offset 25% of it, they now have $1 million they could put in their pockets/save (not likely as their 2009 budget is likely lower than it was in 2008) or they can put it towards the list of innovative features and differentiation they’ve been hoping to get to.

Every development group worth its salt has a list of features/functions they’d like to include, but often other priorities have to be addressed first. The application components/segments where they would use open source, by definition, already exist and so are not differentiating as they’re available on the Internet to anyone. It sounds like common sense but many development groups have not made the shift to a multi-source development model and don’t think proactively about where they can save coding. 

One of our customers had a project to create a set of web applications. The project required 159,000 lines of code. They were able to use open source for most of the application saving 88% of the development cost. Savings of 25-50% are more common but this example makes the point about the benefits of using open source strategically.

Open source software and the rise of collaborative development is a fundamental and major innovation in how software will be developed. It has changed the world forever and we think for the better. In terms of innovation from a development group’s perspective, open source is not the source of their innovation. Rather it provides the common piece-parts every application or service may need, and since it’s available to any development group, it is not a source of innovation but a platform for innovation. 

Developers will become ‘super integrators’ using open source as a foundation, focusing their efforts on the most creative aspects of their work - and that’s where, from their perspective, innovation is created.



CMSWire: Where do you currently see companies using open source savings? Toward putting more resources toward competitive differentiation? Where do you think this will start happening more?

VESCUSO: We see this phenomenon most dramatically in the mobile space. No other industry has moved as aggressively to embrace open source as mobile, spurred in part by competition and by cost pressures. 

Mobile device manufacturers watch every penny of cost that goes into their devices. Using a free Linux-based operating platform, an open source browser (e.g., Safari), etc. reduces costs and frees their own development budgets for value-added features.

The Apple iPhone is not considered an open device, yet it is chock full of open source, with the Safari browser being a highly visible example. Google created the Android mobile platform using Linux and an open source model. 

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Tags: apache, black duck software, drupal, joomla, linux, open source, open source web cms, plone

Black Duck Software recently released a report on how much the current open source codebase is worth, in terms of development costs and manpower. We caught up with their EVP of Marketing and Business Development, Peter Vescuso, to discuss the implications for the Content Management Systems community.