I often wonder if commercial open source applications, things like MySQL, EnterpriseDB, SugarCRM are underpriced. Open source companies tend to start out as low-cost then as they mature that low-cost remains while the features and quality grow which then (in theory) moves to a differentiation strategy.

But would the market bear a higher price? It seems like the answer is starting to be yes...but how much higher still remains to be seen.

HBS suggests low prices aren't always the best strategy in this article Low Prices = More Customers? Not Always

You should not overindulge your customer. Instead, make sure that you extract fair value for what you deliver. Aggressive and acquiescent actions hinder your own efforts to pursue higher profits. [C]ustomer giveaways, value attacks, and aggressive price cuts represent a huge …

There is a huge market for storage products, backup and recovery, data protection and such. In the open source space, only Zmanda seems to be making any progress with the open source approach to this problem. I spoke with Ken Sims and CEO Chander Kant about their new offerings.

Zmanda network launched yesterday and is offering certified versions of Amanda, and support and services similar to the RedHat network model. The pricing will be much lower and easier to understand than traditional storage software. Roughly ~$50-250 per server or workstation. Linux is the primary platform for the solution, but they will be adding more operating systems to the mix over the next year or so.

Amanda has been out since 1991 so its battle tested already and the company has been pleasantly surprised by the number of people using it. "We think our market is the MySQL market. We're adding enhancements …

Back in October when Oracle announced it was acquiring InnoDB I pondered the impact and decided that while irritating, it wasn't that big of a deal for MySQL. I even suggested that MySQL switch the InnoDB functionality to Sleepycat's BerkeleyDB. But now that Oracle is in allegedly in talks to buy Sleepycat as well it adds a new level of complexity.

A few people are starting to make the argument that Oracle is buying up the components of MySQL to put some kind of stranglehold on the non-internal IP. But I think that's merely a by-product of the bigger picture.

By acquiring JBoss and Sleepycat, Oracle automatically positions itself as the owner of two very broadly used products. (NOTE: Since Zend doesn't technically own PHP I can …

Oracle's latest pricing scheme is one that even Rube Goldberg couldn't have designed. Why do I always feel like major application vendors punish buyers for moving to new technologies?

I am a big believer in multi-core chips, and I appreciate that Oracle is discounting for Sun's new chips, but this doesn't make me want to move to multi-core. It appears that it would be cheaper to simply scale hardware. I guess we have to wait to see how much performance boost the multi-core gives you in relation to the cost upgrade.

While Oracle will continue to recognize each core as a separate processor, the processor definition has been amended as it relates to counting …

As Matt and I were chatting about his experience thus far at Alfresco he hit upon the fact that they are running into many organizations that still think open source = free as in cost. In some cases, they are standardizing on certain open source applications but not paying any support or license fees (but remain within the confines of the licensing). It's not that these customers are cheap - it's just that if they don't have to pay for support (because they don't need it), why should they?

Anyway, this led me to wonder if software that is available as truly free can realistically expect to recognize significant revenue on a recurring basis. MySQL is doing well signing users up for the MySQL Network, and Sleepycat and db4objects have done very …

MySQL's latest release hit the 1 million download mark this week. A quick Q&A with MySQL's Zack Urlocker follows.

Why is interest in MySQL 5.0 so high?

Without question, people are tired of paying boatloads of their hard-earned cash to the big database vendors. But it's not just about low-cost. The LAMP stack gives you a lot of flexibility and scalability and reliability. It just works. Its convenient, and its fun.

The difference is that the power is no longer in the hands of the vendor--it has been transferred seemingly overnight to the consumer. It's a mature market and most people don't want or need the latest bell-and-whistle features.

I think that many Silicon Valley software companies have fallen into the same trap -- they are stuck asking themselves, "How can we make the most money?" instead of, "What do users want?". Now that users have more choice -- all vendors need to be on their …

Shai Agassi responded on his blog and in the media to my post (and others) last week regarding his comments about open source. I took his advice and went back and listened to the ZD podcast to make sure I wasn't overreacting. I was able to find all of the quotes I used from the VNUnet article and they weren't out of context enough to alter their meaning, contrary to what Agassi stated.

…