%0 Journal Article %J Open Source Business Resource %D 2010 %T Differentiating Community from Customers in an F/LOSS Business %A Matthew Aslett %A Stephen Walli %X When software companies using free/libre open source software (F/LOSS) in their product and service offerings attempt to manage the customer pipeline and develop a community, problems may arise. Project communities and customer pipelines are not the same thing, although some participants belong to both groups. This creates confusion in the business and tension with the community. F/LOSS communities have been on the rise for the past two decades. Companies began to form around F/LOSS projects in the early 1990s, with some creating their own F/LOSS projects and some wrapping themselves around existing projects. This has created tension between company managers who are trying to earn profits from software that is "available for free," and from developers in communities that do not necessarily want to create software for someone else's corporate gain. This happens regardless of whether the company created the F/LOSS-licensed project itself, or participates in external communities around other projects, or both. This article demonstrates that separating the concepts of community and customer, and of project and product, allows a business to manage clearly both challenges of developing an engaged community and maximizing profits. %B Open Source Business Resource %I Talent First Network %C Ottawa %8 10/2010 %G eng %U http://timreview.ca/article/385 %N October 2010 %9 Articles %1 The 451 Group Matthew Aslett is Senior Analyst, Enterprise Software for The 451 Group and covers the business of free and open source software for The 451 Group's Commercial Adoption of Open Source practice and data management software for the Information Management practice. Prior to joining The 451 Group, Matthew was Deputy Editor of the monthly magazine Computer Business Review and ComputerWire's daily news service. There he covered Linux and open source software and launched the successful Open Source Weblog in January 2006. %2 CodePlex Foundation Stephen R. Walli is Technical Director for the CodePlex Foundation. He has been in the software industry since 1980 as both customer and vendor. Previously as a consultant his clients included Symbian, Microsoft, and the Eclipse and Linux Foundations. In 1995, he was a founder and Vice-President, Research and Development at Softway Systems, a venture-backed startup that developed Interix to migrate UNIX applications to Windows NT based on the POSIX/UNIX standards he helped develop. Interix was Softway developed code, Microsoft licensed code, and a wealth of OSS covered by many licenses. Microsoft acquired Softway in 1999, where Stephen spent five years before joining another open source based start-up, Optaros, as Vice-President, Open Source Development Strategy. He left Optaros in 2006 to pursue his own interests. Stephen organized the first Beijing Open Source Software Forum as part of the Software Innovation Summit 2007, and remains interested in OSS growth in China. He blogs at: http://stephesblog.blogs.com.