Our Pledge to the Open Source Community
I have always been an ambassador for open source and has from the very start of my interest in computers and programming been using and contributing in various ways to the open source community. I strongly believe that transparency and openness lead to better software. Popular open source software are in many ways more scrutinized than closed source software are.
In my role as VP R&D at Eyevinn Technology I early decided that the code we develop for prototypes and proof of concepts will be released as open source. The simple reason was that we in the media technology industry uses a lot of open source software and I wanted this to be our way of contributing back to the open source community in media. I also think that this in some way also helped the industry to take steps forward when it comes to adopting new standards and protocols. But there are a few problems you are faced with as a creator and user of open source.
One problem is that there is a barrier to get started with open source software. One can get it running on their local machine but to take the next step they need an infrastructure to host it on and that can be a barrier in many organizations. As a creator of open source software you want people to use your software and the lower the barrier is to try it out, the better it is.
The other problem for a creator is that it can be very difficult to get financial support for continued maintenance of the software the creator has developed. One way is for a creator to offer the software as a service with a subscription model, but that requires a significant investment in both time and money. Not to mention the financial risk one might take with up-front infrastructure costs.
For a user of open source you are faced with the other side of these problems. The barrier to get started with open source makes it difficult to just evaluate the software in a solution without investing time to deploy it to your infrastructure (assuming you have one). Even though you would like to financially support the creator to maintain the software it can be practically challenging to do so. It would be easier if the software was available as a service.
So, would it not be easier for everyone if all open source software was available as software-as-a-service?
With Eyevinn Open Source Cloud we envision that any open source can be made available as software-as-a-service and contribute to a sustainable business for open source with a revenue-share model with the creators. Our goal is to not be evil and provide the creators with an additional income stream for their projects.
We will share the revenue that is generated by an open source project with the creator, ensure any modifications that had to be made are kept public, never turn open source code into closed source and not preventing customers from hosting the software themselves. If strongly requested by the creator we will respect their wish to remove their project from the platform.
Read our pledge in full and how to claim ownership of your software-as-a-service in the Eyevinn Open Source Cloud online documentation.
Best Regards,
Jonas Birmé
CTO Eyevinn Open Source Cloud