Matt and I have both had conversations with Andy Astor about EnterpriseDB's market positioning. I asked Andy to respond to this post EnterpriseDB's Open (Source) Deception by Seth Grimes.
Andy Astor on Open Source Businesses
In his post on the Intelligent Enterprise blog, Seth Grimes took some shots at EnterpriseDB. In my eyes, Seth's approach was pretty extreme and even sensationalistic. But he did raise an valid issue about the use of the term "open source," particularly in commercial situations.
There are many examples of open source-based businesses in which some or all of a commercial product has restrictions on its openness. In addition to EnterpriseDB, for example, consider SugarCRM, SourceFire, and Jasper. Great companies, all with slightly different business models that allow them to drive revenue while at the same time improving an underlying open source code base. And then there are the closed-source companies that are known by their open source ties, including SpikeSource and Black Duck. All of these companies have a marketing message to craft, and that generally includes associating themselves somehow with open source.
Truth be told, EnterpriseDB has been extremely open with our approach to licensing since our inception. None of the 100+ customers and partners who purchased our products and services in 2006 had any confusion about this issue. Having said that, we've gotten occasional feedback (most of it far more professionally than Seth's blog) that our messaging needed clarification. So, in December, we set about crisping up the messaging at the same time that we simplified our pricing and added PostgreSQL support as a product. The new site went live a couple of days ago, literally a few hours after Seth's blog entry showed up.
EnterpriseDB is by far the world's largest PostgreSQL organization and the largest commercial supporter of the PostgreSQL open source community. Our involvement includes sponsoring two of the seven core team members, employing several important contributors, increasing quantities of code contributions, and paying for an independently-administered PostgreSQL development fund that is currently producing important features such as full-text search improvements. We are committed to furthering the cause of PostgreSQL specifically and open source in general. Indeed, through our own evolution and growth, we are contributing to the development of the new business models that will accelerate the growth of open source.
One thing that can't be argued is that the EnterpriseDB guys are absolutely killing it right now--big sales, big users, huge displacement of Oracle.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on January 19, 2007 09:48 AM
