Too many open source companies are aping the worst of Microsoft’s past behavior, declares Redmonk analyst Stephen O’Grady in an interview, arguing that they’re “fixated” on the “shortsighted” view that “we built it, only we can profit from it.” This echoes something that Chef (now System Initiative) co-founder Adam Jacob recently said, when he argued that open source competition “makes the funnel at the top bigger.”
The choice, according to O’Grady and Jacob, is whether to own all of a small pie, or take a piece of a much larger pie, which turns out to be worth a lot more. And just as importantly, as O’Grady highlights of Microsoft’s earlier behavior, you can end up losing the market by trying to own all of it.