What’s Driving Open Source 2.0?

We're hearing more from vendors about how new features, functionality, rewrites and releases are being driven by customers -- by their direct experience using the software and competing in their various industries.

We're also hearing from customers and users, including the enterprise market, that increasingly they are involved and thus empowered in open source software communities, where they are collaborating on code and road maps and collectively requiring flexibility and openness, including that code and improvements be contributed upstream.

These perspectives on the sell-side and now the buy-side seem to indicate we have arrived at Open Source 2.0.

This newer open source software trend is a natural progression and evolution of the movement away from developer-centric communities toward communities that have had a higher regard and respect for the user -- particularly in the enterprise, where getting more participants to a project can translate to dollars.

Open Source 2.0 is characterized by a higher level of involvement and participation by users and customers, given the wide range of commercial vendors providing support. Today's successful open source communities also are characterized by a higher level of collaboration among users and customers, whereby they pool resources and team up for a number of reasons: to avoid vendor lock-in; to negotiate better terms or prices; or to require that contributions be routed upstream.

In turn, these users and customers are empowered to further drive and steer open source projects and communities, as well as to share their knowledge and experience with others, further expanding open source ecosystems.

There has been an evolution of user and customer thinking and behavior with respect to open source cloud software, for instance, as noted in 451 Research's recent report on the OpenStack cloud computing project and market.

Previously, some large-scale users were directly involved in collaboration in terms of dealing with and resolving OpenStack issues, particularly for enterprises and at large scale, as noted in 451 Research's 00000 on OpenStack in 2013.

However, that customer community, like the OpenStack code, also has been evolving and maturing -- to the point where OpenStack customers now are banding together on requirements for multiple vendors and service-level expectations, as 451 Research's recent report found. This customer side of the community will continue to play an important role in OpenStack's ongoing evolution.

Another area where open source software has evolved is DevOps, a reference to more agile, rapid and efficient methodologies, technologies and processes in managing IT infrastructure, application development and deployments.

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What's Driving Open Source 2.0?