Mikko Välimäki is working in the Digital Economy program at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. A partner of Turré Legal Consulting, he focuses on computer law and intellectual property rights and advises clients on Open Source licensing. He explains why the software industry as a whole is feeling the impact—and getting Mårten Mickos' message— that Open Source is not a journey to profitless hell and what's more, it's unstoppable.

Open Source and Free Software have fundamentally changed the software business. While countless dot-coms went bust over the past two years, Open Source did not. First the perception was that Open Source/Free Software is a one-way ticket, where a vendor needs either to go fully open or remain behind closed doors. Some in the industry saw it in terms of the United States and the USSR. The cathedral versus the bazaar. And dominating talk about Open Source was of course Linux. Ask business people for an example of an Open Source company and you would get a response of how Red Hat is profitable.

Times have changed. Evidence shows that Red Hat is no longer 'The Open Source company.' We have seen how Open Source as a business is much more than Linux. We have learned that Open Source is a multidimensional thing. Right at this moment, lessons from collaborative development and free distribution are being adopted into mainstream software business models.

Look at Scandinavia. Go to MySQL and Trolltech. Check their licensing pages and consider: They are both open and closed. They offer products for free and they sell them, just as Microsoft does. This is called dual licensing [the cathedral in the bazaar]. What's more, it works.

Linux is nobody’s business. Nobody owns Open Source community projects. In contrast, the businessman creates nothing; he owns. Copyrights to MySQL’s database and Trolltech’s Qt tools are owned by those companies and nobody else. Copyright is the key concept here. Linus Torvalds decided to share the copyright of his creation with the community. The founders of MySQL did not. In effect, the Linux kernel is not a business case, but MySQL is.

Copyright is essential in the software business, whether the source code is Open Source or not. If you take care of your rights, you can do both GPL and proprietary transactions. Both the MySQL database and the Trolltech Qt Tool Kit are freely distributed under the terms of the GPL license. GPL plays an important part in an innovative licensing strategy that fits varied needs. If some valuable users prefer freedom, you can give it to them.

Think in positive terms: Open Source business such as MySQL and Trolltech may kill the so-called piracy problem. Former pirates are now GPL users and welcomed members of the community. Think big: Vast computing resources in countries like China and Russia were under-utilized before the Internet and Open Source came to town. Now they have a valid excuse when the strong arm of the US copyright law knocks on the door.

Well, what about making money? Software development executives who fear that involvement with Open Source software only brings lost opportunities need to look closely at their business model. How will the software be used? Who is the potential buyer? Our dual licensors, MySQL and Trolltech, sell their products under commercial terms to companies that integrate their software as part of a combined commercial system. Look around and you'll quickly find databases and GUIs built into mobile phones, cash registers, home electronics and even cars.

But if you do not succeed in your business, don’t blame me or Richard Stallman. In the end, failure will have little to do with Open Source. In the end, the user chooses if your product is worth buying or not.

This Helsinki-based company was founded by the team that developed Anvil, a programming language that Njet CEO Jeripekka Salinen refers to as “a kind of PHP for Java.” They sought out Välimäki and Turre Consulting to help them over the hurdles of revenue models and licensing choices. With guidence from Turre advisers, they kept Anvil Open Source using an Apache license. Then they tackled commercial viability by building a business model that went further than just dependence on fees-for-services. READ THE ANVIL STORY