When Lucidera went belly up, GoodData offered their customers a safe harbor option and guess what, many of them took us up on it and are still with us to this day No data was lost – But even with proprietary software, people have been known to negotiate source code escrows (specifically when dealing with startups) so I don’t think that’s a huge issue. In any case, the data would still exist in EC2 so it’s not like it disappears overnight. Additionally, in a SFDC integration case, the data lives in Salesforce right? It’s not “lost” overnight simply if a partner happens to expire I believe. In a CSV upload case (direct) the data is not lost either since clearly the user had it onsite – So I don’t believe that’s a significant issue or any more of a risk for them than for any other vendor.

Good discussion – Merci!

Inconvenience? Clearly – show stopper? I think not.

Which contributions did we get? Over 100 connectors, translation of the UI in 10 languages, a vibrant community support system (forum, bugtracker). Not bad I think.

Did I audit my bank’s Cobol code? No. But would I buy stock in a company that boasts that it does not need to be transparent in reporting and accountability? No. (somewhat bogus analogy I think, but you started it).

All right, my turn to throw you a curve ball: should (God forbid) GoodData go belly up, what guarantee do your users have about getting their data back? And about continuing to have access to mission critical systems they are relying on?

So can we insert and then mine such customers into a sane CRM for later use? Of course not, but people are free to do this if they want. That’s one of the risks an open shop takes – incidentally, I can tell you it’s fairly rare when this happens. People tend to use valid creds because they want the support that comes with a GoodData account anyway.

Additionally, they tend to like and leverage our collaboration features and invite colleagues to their BI projects – So overall there is very little “bogus” info coming in for our signups.

I’ve never understood what “reviewing” some vendor’s source code can possibly bring to the table – unless I’m intellectually curious as a developer well versed in the language/platform being used. As a user, please tell me why I give a hoot about your source code? And as a user, believe me the last thing I want to do is muck with thousands of lines of your code! I want something I can use _now_, not a Rubik’s cube.

How many people have actually forked your product? Where are they and what additions/modifications have they brought? Talend is a highly rich and complex product (I think you would agree) – where is the value of my being able to “see” your source code?

It’s like trusting your money to a bank based on being able to examine their mainframe code. Who cares? – unless you’re a Cobol hacker

The ire that you seem to have drawn from some of the adjacent BI players perhaps distracts from the central point here, which is that OSS is a massive force multiplier for its users, but most COSS pricing schemes put a brake on the real benefits.

Linux was perhaps the first piece of OSS to be successful in the commercial environment, but most of the COSS plays that rose around it were execrable – they took an abusive closed source model of per CPU licensing+S&M, spun the balance between ‘licensing’ and ‘S&M’ just enough for the whole deal to be a bit cheaper and pretty much carried on as before. As a result the only people getting the true benefits are those that are too small to care about S&M (e.g. startups) and those that are large enough to look after themselves (e.g. Google); that is until Canonical came along with a new model.

The trouble here is that OSS businesses really should be about support (and custom development), but such businesses don’t scale well as they’re heavily manpower dependent. Of course there have been a lucky few who’ve managed to spin their professional services company that does OSS support and dev to look like a software company in order to achieve high growth and a nice multiple on exit. These however should be viewed as the rare exceptions rather than the rule.

Of course (as you well know) the game is moving on. If you build a service company that scales by demand (users) rather than supply (headcount) then you can get similar (or better) multiples than a software company, and these days you can build much of the infrastructure of a service out of OSS and other people’s commodity services.

@Roman, @Peter – There is a clear difference in what you can do (in terms of usage and source code access) with the free open source version and the commercial version. The open source version is NOT a trial version, it is a real product that provides value and is really open (check our site for user testimonials, many of them use the free product). The proceeds from the commercial version funds the development of both the open source and commercial products. And no, unless you are a client, you don’t get access to this part of the source code.

BTW, COSS companies are not philanthropies… and the open core model that we use, along with many other vendors, has proven to be a pretty good one for providing value, to users and vendors alike. I think SaaS & Cloud also provide value, although the model isn’t as clearly proven. But GoodData is going to change this