Open source companies' reputation problem with Chris Holmes

The Business of Open Source

Today on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Chris Holmes, co-founder and CEO of Greymatter. Greymatter is deeply involved in the open source ecosystem and maintains the Go Envoy Control Plane, but Chris is adamant that it is not an open source company. We had a great discussion about why that is, what it means for the company and the conversations he ends up having around open source with his customers and partner companies.

Some particularly interesting points that came up:

• Customers worry that buying Greymatter could force them to buy enterprise versions of open source software — and Chris thinks that this could be a symptom of the fact that many users expect that they’ll end up being forced to pay for something they don’t want to pay for
• How open source companies, and open source projects in general, can be viewed as risky if they are only backed by one company
• Who is gonna pay for open source? How if you are going to get away from open source projects being aggressively monetized, big companies have to put their money where their mouth is and pay for open source development directly
• Why and how to get started selling to governments. Yes, the sales cycles are longer but the deals tend to be very sticky once you get in — and why Chris actually finds it easier to sell to the military than to large enterprises.
• What benefits Greymatter gets from being a maintainer of the Go Envoy Control Plane.

Struggling with how to get your product strategy right, and find the right balance between your open source project and your commercial offering? Not sure how your user audience and customer market relate to each other? You might want to work with me.