I’ve talked in the past about a number of “open source” business models. There’s the MySQL “dual license” model, where all the software is available under an open license but a proprietary license can be purchased.

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.

OpenLogic provides the kind of support for open source software that many companies have come to expect with commercial software, as summed up by one of OpenLogic's bloggers:

"What we consistently hear is that companies need and want the same services for open source software that they get from proprietary software. Hence the rise of open source companies…."

Steve Goodman, co-founder and CEO of network management startup PacketTrap Networks, is predicting that commercial open source companies are doomed to fail. Goodman's not railing against open source or commercial software, per se. It's converting the former into the latter that he sees as inherently flawed.

A recent ComptuerWorld article argues that open-source-based companies are just not going to be able to make as much money as their commercial counterparts, and, thus, should open themselves up to supporting the open-source versions of their software, too. I disagree.

There are more and more companies adopting open source solutions in favor of proprietary software due to the cost savings they can reap, although perhaps not enough. Today, I noticed this release from IBM about Italian food company Gruppo Amadori rolling out Red Hat Enterprise Linux with desktops running IBM software, much of which is free, and some of which has open source roots.

While it's pretty painless to convert from commercial office software to an open source version, if you'd like to replace commercial security products with open source counterparts, you'll likely have to do some work. You may need to combine several open source tools to get the functionality you get from a single commercial product.

"Web 2.0 software-as-a-service applications built on top of the LAMP stack now generate several orders of magnitude more revenue than any companies seeking to directly monetize open source. And most of the software used by those Web 2.0 companies above the commodity platform layer is proprietary. Not only that, Web 2.0 is siphoning developers and buzz away from open source."

In news that will be of interest to both open- and closed-source developers, Canonical is about to open a new revenue stream by offering a suite of commercial services for deploying and managing Bazaar, the open-source version-control system.  Here's the scoop, with some thoughts.