When I introduced my ongoing Living in the Cloud Series, I said
I will feel very confident if the vendor releases the source code of the app under one of the OSI approved licenses. Apart from the actual benefits of Opensource, I can also be sure that I will still be able to use the app even if the cloud vendor goes out of business. Wordpress, Wikidot, Deki Wiki, etc. are examples of cloud based apps available as Opensource.
Well, this trend is building up and we are seeing more and more Opensource companies offering their product as SaaS. It is a smart move by the Opensource vendors because Gartner is predicting SaaS market to hit $14.8 billion in 2012. The recent convert to SaaS from the Opensource world is the enterprise level content management system ezPublish. They have partnered with a Norwegian firm, Mamut ASA, to offer their product as a SaaS offering. It is expected to be released soon, sometime this fall. ezPublish has a large install base including Hitachi, US Naby, MIT, etc.
It all makes sense, Open Source as such is not a business model, it's a development/collaboration model. Vendors do have to turn where they can find revenue, and that's SaaS. There's a really good post on this by Matt Asay: It's becoming hard to distinguish open source from SaaS.
I am not sure I agree here. It is quite unique, in the way I understand it, to see an Open Source CMS both available for download and in a SaaS model. It is hard in a traditional SaaS model to find out where the price come from. We could hope that the SaaS model based on an Open Source CMS also available for download will be even more competitive and attractive. That is why I do not totally agree here.
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