The Open Source Platform For Web 2.0
JBoss popularized the idea of "professional" open source. They've been rewarded for building the right team, in the right space, at the right time, and generating revenue. Their investors came out looking good too.
The question is, are other open source projects ripe for commercialization? I am not the first person to ask this question and won't be the last.
One project I really love is drupal. I mean, with a name like drupal, what’s not to love?
On a more serious note, however, drupal is a great example of an existing open source project that could really benefit from “professional-ization.” There are a few clear indicators of this:
1) Lots of reports of security issues about drupal
2) Lots of demand for consulting and customization services (just look at the drupal forums and job listings to get a sense of this)
3) Lots of modules. Whenever there are a lot of modules available for an open source project, my experience has been that they don’t often work together perfectly.
Is the area of Content Management Systems (CMS) interesting? Most people would tell you the space is already far too crowded.
Yet what is so interesting about drupal is that it is at the intersection of Open Source and Web 2.0.
How do you make a “Web 1.0” site into a “Web 2.0” site? It’s not easy. There are some wiki companies out there – but I am not referring to wiki’s. I mean things like tagging, uploading and sharing of files, users and user profiles, the ability to easily bring in articles. Supposing that I want to MySpace and Flickr and Digg my own web site (on snowboarding, tech topics, whatever), how do I do that today? There really is no obvious way.
Drupal is such an attractive option for this because all the pieces are there – you can get the features you need if you are patient and willing to do a lot of customization to get the modules to work together. But it doesn’t work out of the box. And anytime things don’t work out of the box, that means there are a whole bunch of users that are prevented from using the product.
Drupal already has lots of users, and if an Alexa ranking in the 2000’s is any indicator, it’s a very popular destination. (Alexa is not a perfect indicator, but certainly being in the top few thousand is some metric.)
How’s the market? Positioned as a content management platform - probably not so great. But positioned as “the open source platform for Web 2.0,” it’s very interesting.
There are lots of communities out there. A bunch of sites for sharing photos. A few sites that are great for tagging.
But what happens when you want to hold onto those users – you don’t want to give them up to MySpace or Flickr and so on. You want to keep them on your own site but give them all the sorts of interactive and community capabilities they’ve come to expect so they have no reason to leave?
A professional-ized version of drupal could very well be the answer.
The question is, are other open source projects ripe for commercialization? I am not the first person to ask this question and won't be the last.
One project I really love is drupal. I mean, with a name like drupal, what’s not to love?
On a more serious note, however, drupal is a great example of an existing open source project that could really benefit from “professional-ization.” There are a few clear indicators of this:
1) Lots of reports of security issues about drupal
2) Lots of demand for consulting and customization services (just look at the drupal forums and job listings to get a sense of this)
3) Lots of modules. Whenever there are a lot of modules available for an open source project, my experience has been that they don’t often work together perfectly.
Is the area of Content Management Systems (CMS) interesting? Most people would tell you the space is already far too crowded.
Yet what is so interesting about drupal is that it is at the intersection of Open Source and Web 2.0.
How do you make a “Web 1.0” site into a “Web 2.0” site? It’s not easy. There are some wiki companies out there – but I am not referring to wiki’s. I mean things like tagging, uploading and sharing of files, users and user profiles, the ability to easily bring in articles. Supposing that I want to MySpace and Flickr and Digg my own web site (on snowboarding, tech topics, whatever), how do I do that today? There really is no obvious way.
Drupal is such an attractive option for this because all the pieces are there – you can get the features you need if you are patient and willing to do a lot of customization to get the modules to work together. But it doesn’t work out of the box. And anytime things don’t work out of the box, that means there are a whole bunch of users that are prevented from using the product.
Drupal already has lots of users, and if an Alexa ranking in the 2000’s is any indicator, it’s a very popular destination. (Alexa is not a perfect indicator, but certainly being in the top few thousand is some metric.)
How’s the market? Positioned as a content management platform - probably not so great. But positioned as “the open source platform for Web 2.0,” it’s very interesting.
There are lots of communities out there. A bunch of sites for sharing photos. A few sites that are great for tagging.
But what happens when you want to hold onto those users – you don’t want to give them up to MySpace or Flickr and so on. You want to keep them on your own site but give them all the sorts of interactive and community capabilities they’ve come to expect so they have no reason to leave?
A professional-ized version of drupal could very well be the answer.
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