According to a talk by Benchmark Capital's Rob Bearden at this week's Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), the nature of open source business models are changing. He says open source companies should strive to become the "enterprise standard" in their market space in order to effectively monetize their commodities.

Whereas most developers have familiarity with open source, fewer of their managers and even fewer senior execs have much experience with it, especially when it comes to corporate policy or governance. Thus, it's good news that there are organizations and resources that can help companies get their collective heads around the issues and best practices for managing them.

I'm currently working on pricing models for several new open-source companies, and I keep running into a similar set of challenges. The primary issue is that when you shrink a market, as open source does, you must to find a pricing model that solves the equation, meaning that your costs must substantially lower in order for you to make money.
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More and more organizations are relying on open source software to build, test, deploy, and run mission critical IT applications. From small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, organizations worldwide are continuing to find open source as a cost effective means to deliver quality business applications.

Open source software alone is not a magic wand for business. Organizations need to apply open technologies, processes, community participation, and innovative business models in order to get real change and positive results.

Slowly but surely, open source software is making its way to countries that have previously seen very little FOSS adoption, and the good news is that for many of these countries, it's the best technology choice to make.

Schools are heeding the call from organizations seeking IT personnel skilled in open source, but such efforts must involve broader industry participation and greater integration across the curriculum, according to an analyst.

So what happened to open source as a business? There was a wave of “commercial open source” companies that were going to change the world, including SugarCRM, Alfresco, Jasper, Pentaho, and ActiveGrid, a company I started in 2003 to bring open source software into businesses.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) will be hosting a "small open source license clinic" at the Library of Congress, Washington DC, in May. The event is designed to bring together individuals, organizations and government agencies to help all better understand the nature of open source licenses.