A plethora of open source tools exist on the market to perform a wide variety of development tasks. New tools are popping up all the time as we advance the state of the art in software development, and entrepreneurs find more niches to fill. Open source tools have plenty of benefits, but they also have their drawbacks.
What do you do when your favorite open source tool gets purchased by a commercial tool vendor? This practice has become a growing trend.
A new open source tool is created.
It develops a loyal following and gets evangelized.
It gets adopted by a big tech company and popularized.
When you finally jump on the bandwagon, it gets sold to a commercial tool vendor and the “free” tool now has a license fee attached to it.
Think about it. The people who developed the tool need some way to monetize the effort that went into developing the tool. They can’t suddenly start charging fees – that would violate the spirit of open source. So, they have two options.
Option 1: Offer a free open source tool with paid support
Under option 1, the tool developers give away the tool but form a consulting company to help clients implement the tool. This was very popular in the 2000s and 2010s. A new open source tool would pop up, gain traction in the market, and start to gain market share. But as with any tool, there are learning curves. When you “hit the wall” as you inevitably do, you do a search on the tool and lo and behold, a consulting company is advertising that they are the ones who developed the tool and have all the experts. They are more than happy to help you with your problem for $225 an hour with a minimum $15,000 retainer fee.
Option 2: Sell the open source tool
Under option 2, the tool gains enough market share to get the attention of the commercial tool vendors. They see a way to “integrate” the tool into their stable of tools and gain valuable customers. This is a win-win for both the developer and the vendor. The developer gets a huge payoff for the work spent developing and supporting the tool, and the vendor gets a valuable customer base that can be cross-sold on other products.
The potential losers in this option are 1) the vast number of open source contributors who have supported the tool development over the years, and 2) the customers who like the fees associated with the open source tool ($0), but now have to pay a licensing fee.
So, what’s your best option?
Well, if the tool happens to have been purchased by a tool vendor that you are already licensing products from, then you are in luck. Most likely, the new tool will be integrated into the vendor’s ecosystem, and your integration and data sharing problems will now be solved and maintained by the tool vendor. This is not a bad situation and may actually solve some of your tool integration problems. Think of it as shifting your integration support to your tool vendor and repurposing your internal staff to other tasks.
If the tool gets bought by a tool vendor with tools or products you don’t use, don’t panic. First, the vendor will not make drastic changes to the tool immediately. It will take time to integrate it into their tool suite. Further, the vendor must re-capture the cost of the purchase through license fees on the user base.
Initially, the customer base has no choice but to pay the licensing fees. The vendor will expect users to drop off as they pivot to other open source tools, but their goal is to retain as many users as possible to fund the purchase of the tool. So, changes will come slowly. That gives you time to evaluate.
If the changes are going in your direction and you are already using the vendor’s tool suite, then wait it out and monitor the changes. You might be pleasantly surprised.
If the changes are not helping you, or if you don’t use any of the vendor’s other tools, then it’s time to search for a new open source tool.
Need help selecting a testing tool or deciding what to do when your favorite tools get sold? Give us a call. We can help.
