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OpenLogic, a provider of open-source software and services, has introduced a new business model that taps open-source developers for their expertise and pays them for their services.
The Broomfield, Colo., company has launched a consolidated enterprise support offering that taps the extended open-source community to provide support for the various open-source projects and technologies that OpenLogic offers its customers.
OpenLogic calls its new initiative its Expert Community program, through which OpenLogic will pay qualified experts in the open-source community to provide support for projects they are intimately familiar with.
Company officials said the OpenLogic Expert Community features experts from more than 50 leading open-source projects, including Apache HTTP Server, Ant, Hibernate, MyFaces, Spring, Struts and Tomcat.
Moreover, to qualify as a member of the OpenLogic Expert Community, developers must have “committer” status on an open-source project or must be referred by a committer for one of the open-source products supported and certified by OpenLogic, the company said.
OpenLogic is looking to extend its Expert Community, and interested open-source developers can visit www.openlogic.com for more information about the program.
OpenLogic officials said their approach to tapping the extended open-source community differs from some companies that simply try to hire away open-source experts and project leaders. Instead, OpenLogic directly compensates developers while enabling them to maintain whatever endeavor they are currently involved in. Meanwhile, in addition to paying the developer, OpenLogic has vowed to donate funding to the various projects the developers represent.
Company officials said OpenLogic provides enterprise support for more than 150 certified open-source products. And while OpenLogic will handle tier 1 and tier 2 support, it will tap the OpenLogic Expert Community to take on more complex issues, the company said.
“We have heard loud and clear from our larger enterprise customers, some of whom are using more than 400 open-source products, that they want one throat to choke for open-source support,” said Steven Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic, in a statement. “OpenLogics Expert Community program is being launched to help address this need in a new, creative way. Enterprises get the support they require, and open-source committers and contributors can earn money to support the work they love to do.”
Although OpenLogics move might be seen as creative in its effort to compensate open-source experts for their work, IBM in late 2003 received a patent that defines a mechanism for paying programmers who work in an open-source-like model.