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Just a reminder, these posts are not legal advice. This site is the personal blog of Mark Radcliffe and the opinions expressed are those of Mark Radcliffe and not those of his clients, DLA Piper or the clients of DLA Piper.

About Me:

Mark Radcliffe

I earned a B.S. in Chemistry magna cum laude from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. I have been practicing law in Silicon Valley for over 25 years and am now a senior partner at DLA Piper. DLA Piper is a new global law firm formed in 2005 from the merger of three law firms. The firm now has 3600 lawyers in 25 countries and 65 cities. My practice is a mix of corporate securities and intellectual property. I work with many startups as well as large global companies. I have had the opportunity to work with companies in many industries, ranging from semiconductor to digital media to open source. I am the General Counsel, pro bono, of the Open Source Initiative and I ran the "Users" committee reviewing the GPLv3 draft.

Rumors of the Demise of Open Source Startups: Greatly Exaggerated

15/11/08

Recently, Trip Chowdry, a Silicon Valley pundit, predicted (as reported in Barrons): ’”‘almost every’ VC funded open-source company is struggling and will run out of funds within the next 6 months”  http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/11/10/trippin-with-trip-one-mans-view-of-carnage-to-come/.  I share Matt Asay’s scepticism.  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10094221-16.html. 

Based on my experience with the open source startups who are my clients, Trip is simply wrong. In fact, I have been involved in two different open source venture fundings in the last thirty days. At worst, no more than 10% of the open source startups that I represent are in difficult straits. I have been working with startups for over twenty five years (and remember about half of all startups fail over time), this percentage is hardly unusual.

Bill Snyder makes some interesting points about the differentiation between open source companies and other technology companies (particularly Web 2.0 companies) http://weblog.infoworld.com/tech-bottom-line/archives/2008/11/nuclear_winter.html. I think that the open source companies will thrive in the current market because of their lower cost (critical as IT budgets shrink). However, open source is not business magic and open source companies need to manage their resources and costs carefully.

 

 

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2 Comments

  1. [...] See the rest here: Law &a&#109p; Life: Silicon &#86alley » Ru&#109ors of t&#104e De&#109ise of Open Source &#8230… [...]

    Pingback by Law & Life: Silicon Valley » Rumors of the Demise of Open Source … | GapTech — November 16, 2008 @ 3:12 pm

  2. [...] Rumors of the Demise of Open Source Startups: Greatly Exaggerated Mark Radcliffe, Law & Life: Silicon Valley [...]

    Pingback by 451 CAOS Theory » 451 CAOS Links 2008.11.18 — November 18, 2008 @ 7:43 am

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