During the seminar Open Source from a business perspective the audience listened to experts talking about how they work with open source, from a business perspective, in their organizations and the journeys they have made. The speakers talked about the challenges, opportunities and why open source can be a good business choice.
Patrik Backman held the presentation – Open Source from a Venture Capital Perspective: Building Global Winners.
After an introduction from Gabriel Modéus, Swedsoft’s secretary general, Patrik Backman gave the first talk of the afternoon, Open Source from a Venture Capital Perspective: Building Global Winners. Patrik, who is a co-founder of the MariaDB Database Company and the OpenOcean venture capital firm, presented an overview of how big startup winners have been built using Open Source, and what OpenOcean looks at when assessing startup investment opportunities that utilize Open Source.
Open Source-based business models
Carl-Eric Mols, Open Source Strategist, Addalot and former Head of open source Sony Mobile then gave an introduction to different Open Source-based business models.
Carl-Eric Mos talked about the different Open Source-based Business Models.
In his presentation he talked about how Open Source by itself is not a business model. Instead it is the licensing mechanisms and practices that come with Open Source which challenges companies to seek alternative ways for revenue, instead of the traditional transactional model of selling software.
Business opportunities and challenges with Open Source was the title of Gunnar Nilsson’s, Open Source Strategies at Ericsson, presentation. Gunnar talked about how you need to set your course and navigate from early adoption of technology towards providing these technology elements in your product. He also talked about what challenges to address, how to engage and drive technology as well as how to scale consumption and deal with disruptions throughout the life cycle of a product.
Serge Lachapelle, Director of Product Management, Google Workspace presentation was called WebRTC: a journey in open source communications. In his presentation Serge talked about WebRTC, the history, usage and the future exciting future that lies ahead. He described how Google had released technology for online video and calls as Open Source and their journey in Open Source. He also talked about why Google has chosen to develop a lot of its video/call services in Sweden.
Gianfranco Gabassi who is an Enterprise Account Manager at Red Hat held the last presentation of the day. Red Hat is the world’s biggest open source company selling open source software. The audience could listen to Gianfranco’s presentation: Give it away! How Red Hat sells Open Source software, where he talked about Red Hat’s business model and how they work within open source communities to create innovative products for their customers. During the presentation and Q&A he also answered questions about what kind of value they add to the Open Source software, that would otherwise be free to download and use.
Q&A sessions – learn more about Open Source
Gabriel Modéus, Swedsoft and Gianfranco Gabassi, Red Hat during one of the Q&A sessions.
The audience asked engaging questions to the speakers during the Q&A sessions that were moderated by Gabriel Modéus. We want to send a big thank you to our speakers who gave interesting and engaging talks that gave a great overview of the different ways open source can be used in business. If you want to learn more about Open Source take a look at our previous seminars on Open Source or get in touch with Swedsoft’s Industrial Open Source Network.
