How does one move from a traditional software model to an Open Source model?

Recently, I had an opportunity to meet with Murugan Pal, founder and CTO of SpikeSource. We discussed various topics relating to Open Source. Two areas of particular interest were around Pricing Model and Migration steps. Murugan promised to summarize his thoughts in his blog, take a look at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8510.

At first glance the migration steps Murugan outlined seemed a little overwhelming especially if one has hundreds of thousands of lines of code, however, Murugan was quick to point out that the code need not be perfect. He is of the opinion that if you take the approach of being open, honest and willing to clearly document areas of code that need cleanup/work, Open Source developers will still embrace you. The steps as outlined by Murugan make a lot of sense. Anyone serious about the Open Source model will find his write up very useful.

In my next posting, I'll share my discussions with someone involved with Actuate's open source initiative, BIRT (http://www.eclipse.org/birt/) and perhaps someone close to SugarCRM and Alfresco. The next few weeks are really busy with travel to Bangalore, Chicago etc., but hopefully i will be able to get a couple of postings in before the end of the year.