One Billion Ringgit Open Source Company

10 points that are essential to create a future One Billion Ringgit Open Source Company in Malaysia

Transcript

1. 10 Points On How To Build A One Billion Ringgit Open Source Company
2. Red Hat is a one billion dollar Open Source company. We also can be like Red Hat. Disclaimer: I'm not working with Red Hat :)
3. What is required to become like Red Hat?
4. Number 1: Be honest Red Hat takes other people source code, and package it into a solution, but they are honest about the origin of the software. They always credited the author, and follow the license that governs the source code.
5. Number 2: Don't be stingy In their early days, Red Hat distribution is always free of charge. You can download the ISO and install the OS. It is still the same today. You only pay if you want their support and patch update.
6. Number 3: Embrace true Open Source Never produce Open Core software. Open Core is a betrayal to the Open Source community. And your customer also will not like you.
7. Number 4: Use GNU GPL license Nearly all Red Hat software is licensed under GNU GPL. This effectively requires other people who takes your source code to release their enhancement under the same license, if they are giving/selling it to a third party. This stops people from making the software proprietary and the software becomes better each time it was modified. Your rival becomes your friend.
8. Number 5: Contribute back to the Open Source community Red Hat hires most of Linux kernel maintainer. Red Hat produce Fedora distribution for the community (and as their testbed too). Red Hat buy rights to proprietary software and made it Open Source (Netscape Directory Server). Red Hat support emerging technologies (KVM, libvirt, augeas)
9. Number 6: Collaborate with your rival The beauty of Open Source is that you can collaborate with your rival. Red Hat and Suse collaborated together for LibreOffice development, and in the end, both company (and community) get the benefits
10. Number 7: Don't use patent to make money Red Hat also patented their invention. But they don't use it to extract money from other company. In fact, Red Hat use patent to protect themselves and others from patent troll. Look for Open Invention Network
11. Number 8: Focus on your strength, and diverse a little bit Red Hat focus is always Linux operating system, but that does not stop them from diversifying their product to include Java Application Server (JBOSS), Cloud (Red Hat OpenStack) and storage (GlusterFS)
12. Number 9: Don't kill your clone (aka derivatives) Red Hat clones is everywhere. CentOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Yellow Dog Linux are some of them. This clones might produce something that could be good for you. For example YUM package updater comes from Yellow Dog, and now the default tool in Red Hat and other clones
13. Number 10: Be Patient Red Hat did not become worth 1 billion overnight. It takes them about 10 years to achieve it.
14. Thank you sharuzzaman@gmail.com