Open-source VC investments: Time for payback
Venture capitalists have poured $3.2 billion into open-source companies since 1997, according to a new report from The 451 Group. It’s about time we started delivering a return on that investment.
(Credit: The 451 Group)
In some ways, of course, this $3.2 billion investment has already been repaid several times over. The Linux Foundation, for example, estimates that that the Linux kernel is worth $10.8 billion in free research and development, and a compelling argument has been made that open-source vendors have already saved customers $60 billion in license fees they’d normally be paying.
Indeed, if you expand beyond just vendor-initiated open source, you quickly get well beyond a few billion dollars in value.
All of this is great, but VCs aren’t known for the prettiness of the bows they place on their Christmas presents. They’re investing to make a return for themselves, not enterprise IT or developing economies. With few exceptions–including Red Hat, Suse, XenSource, Zimbra, and JBoss–the open-source ecosystem hasn’t been fattening the coffers of VCs.
This must change. (and so it shall…)