Savio Rodrigues has published a post arguing that cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft's Azure pose a threat to the monetization of open source by specialist vendors.

So what happened to open source as a business? There was a wave of “commercial open source” companies that were going to change the world, including SugarCRM, Alfresco, Jasper, Pentaho, and ActiveGrid, a company I started in 2003 to bring open source software into businesses.

Continuing the ongoing discussion about open source software business models, Rich Sharples of Red Hat’s JBoss division weighs in on an issue I have with Savio Rodrigues’s categorization of open source users: namely the fact that it does not take into account the value of the application in question.

There was some interesting discussion following my post last week asking whether there is a growing rift between commercial open source software vendors and some aspects of the open source user community.

The future of commercial open source software lies in commercial licensing strategies, but which are the strategies that are more likely to deliver the results vendors are looking for?

A little over a year ago, we took a look at 10 Commercial Open Source Security Vendors. As we set out to update that list, two facts jumped out: 1) the number of open source security apps with commercial support has grown substantially and 2) the line between open source and commercial applications continues to blur.

Over the last couple of years a number of different open source business strategies have evolved. According to the 451 Group, it's an evolution that includes the broader adoption and usage of open source overall by both open source and proprietary software vendors.

Maybe it’s a coincidence but this week has seen evidence of tension between commercial open source vendors and elements of the open source user community. Matt Asay stirred up something of a hornet’s nest with his post questioning how open source vendors can find ways of encouraging users to contribute either code of cash in return for free software

While it's pretty painless to convert from commercial office software to an open source version, if you'd like to replace commercial security products with open source counterparts, you'll likely have to do some work. You may need to combine several open source tools to get the functionality you get from a single commercial product.