Microsoft's licensing changes and pricing are motivating companies to look at alternatives, according to Rosenberg. "We expect to do $1.2 million to $1.5 million in SUSE/Novell Linux-related professional work this year," he said.
And more people are realizing that open source is here to stay, Rosenberg added. "It controls the lion's share of the Internet. [It provides] security for organizations. The app server started being very popular, and the fact that Oracle and [IBM] DB2 databases play atop SUSE is a big deal," he said.
Putting OpenExchange code into GPL will give solution providers like RICIS direct access to the code and influence its future direction. In addition, OpenExchange's move to GPL will let solution providers customize installations for customers and, ultimately, get those tweaks into the source tree so they'll become supported, as well as open up components--such as Java runtimes--that previously had been proprietary, Rosenberg said.
"They will become available to us, and we can do more things to the product than we could before," he said.
Olbe, Germany-based Netline is working on a hybrid model, similar to that pioneered by MySQL, Hoberg said. "We're building a commercial business model based on maintenance and services and add-ons," he said.
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