Progress software spin-off offers services and support around packaged open source apps
According to Alston, FuseSource takes the open source Apache-based products like active Mq service mix and Camel and create certified distributions with installers and documentation. They also sell SLAs for support and additional services around these Apache-based products. In this regard their service model is very similar to Red Hat. What Red Hat is doing for Linux, FuseSource would like to do with their Apache products.
But don’t think that FuseSource is just taking from the open source community without giving as well. On the Apache products that they sell commercially, the company has about 20 people who have contributed code back on those projects. Additionally, the founders of some of those projects and the Apache appointed PM chairs are FuseSource employees as well. So they are deeply rooted in the communities that they are servicing.
Alston acknowledges that selling support and services alone will not be enough to justify a business. This is why FuseSource also sells subscriptions, again ala’ Red Hat. Additionally, FuseSource offers tools for some of the Apache products. While these tools are not themselves open source, Alston cautions that this is not an open core model either. They are just tools to use on open source projects, but not open themselves.
It will be interesting to see over time how successful FuseSource can be. While some have knocked Red Hat for not yet being a 5 billion dollars company, while others point to them as an anomaly in the open source ecosystem, a good test will be to see how succesful FuseSource can be with a very similar business model.
