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It looks like MySQL is growing up. Business Week reports of a forthcoming IPO for the FOSS database firm. Good for MySQL for showing that FOSS is not all hoopla over peer-production nor the emergence of non-monetary economics in innovating activity.
As I've argued, the more FOSS technologies and the FOSS community mature, the more FOSS firms will adopt formal capital and organizational structures. FOSS supporters who disagree with this point aim to deflect standard business and economic scrutiny of the FOSS movement. However, when a FOSS firm like MySQL joins the big leagues and holds obligation to shareholders, it must be scrutinized as any other commercial entity. There is no more "but FOSS code gives you the freedom to tinker." FOSS entities may downplay the role of capital and profit motive in innovation when they are not capable of forming sustainable businesses, but then... [Kevin Harvey, a general partner at Benchmark Capital, and MySQL's chairman] "It's not a story of profits at first; it's a story of profits you'll generate as you grow." Alas, perhaps FOSS' rhetoric has hurt its stealthy commercial ambitions. The question investors must ask is whether FOSS entities tricked themselves into believing their own revolutionary banter and turned into their own useful idiots. If so, a professional CEO may help...MySQL's ability to keep selling service contracts for software that's also available free will affect its valuation, though. "A lot of people think the open-source market for database software is very lucrative," Le Blanc [Jereme Le Blanc, VP at investment bank Boston Corporate Finance] says. "It's too early at this point to gauge whether the model works." The market is the ultimate test for MySQL- now the test is whether anyone wants its code under FOSS licensing conditions, not whether anyone would worship the code because they can tinker with it. One wonders whether FOSS firms like MySQL would enjoy more commercial potential today had they not wasted all of these years prattling about some messianic significance of open/free source code.
posted by Noel Le @ 7:44 PM | Free Culture Movement
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