Nick has found two articles from news.com, both published in 2005 but still very relevant to our point of view, to define new possible trends concerning the way of licencing software (by the way: generally speaking, not just for open source components).
Open source reshaping services market
Seeking services revenue is not restricted to the open-source crowd. With corporate spending on software restrained, established providers of proprietary software increasingly rely on ongoing revenues, such as maintenance rather than new license sales. In an earnings call earlier this year, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison touted the company’s “subscription” maintenance business as “an extremely high-margin business.” […]
JBoss founder and CEO Marc Fleury said that his company’s support structure will ultimately give it an advantage over others crowding into the field. He said scaling up its support offerings so that the company can handle many clients with large-scale applications is one of the biggest challenges the company faces. “Customers want to know their provider is viable,” Fleury said. “Getting support directly from the vendor who wrote the software is a better model…What’s the credibility (of others)?”
Open-source companies chase steady money
Many industry veterans argue that open source is accelerating a shift that has been going on in the software industry for some time: Rather than hinge their business on big-ticket license contracts, software providers increasingly rely on recurring maintenance revenue. […]
And because most open-source tools don’t have license fees attached to them, commercial open-source companies are often forced to build their businesses around services revenue, in the form of support, up-front installation or training. With this model, purchasing software is more like committing to a yearlong cell phone contract–and less like buying a car with a large cash outlay and making regular payments later. […]
“Larry (Ellison) is buying everything he can get his hands on to consolidate the (business applications) industry. He believes that innovation in software is over. It’s all about maintenance revenue,” Goodnight said. […]
Analysts say that open-source software requires an industry of services companies for its adoption to spread. Some open-source products have been created by a relatively small group of programmers and do not have round-the-clock support organizations. Corporate customers require some sort of vendor to rely upon. […]
Also, a shift in buying habits is fueling interest in annuity-style contracts between providers and corporate customers. Increasingly savvy customers are shying away from committing to large-scale projects that consume millions of dollars and take years to complete.
“Enterprise customers, in particular, continue to be willing to pay fair and reasonable prices for software. The difference with the old days is that they don’t want to pay for it all up front,” Mitchell Kertzman, partner at venture capital firm Hummer Winblad and former CEO of Sybase, said at a conference in February. “They want to pay for it as they realize the value and get return on investment.” […]
“From a management point of view, if you do it correctly you can build a better forecast into expenses and revenue flow,” relies on subscriptions. Instead of spending the end of every said Matthew Szulik, CEO of Linux distributor Red Hat, which quarter trying to land big deals, the subscription approach “allows you to focus on strategic issues,” he said.