At the AlwaysOn 2009 Summit at Stanford a panel of entrepreneurs and intellectual property experts discussed the issue of using open source software for SaaS applications:
- Matt Asay, VP Business Development, Alfresco; & Blogger, CNET
- Ron Yekutiel, CEO, Kaltura
- Satish Dharmaraj, Partner Redpoint Ventures, and Founder, former CEO Zimbra
- Tom Erickson, CEO, Acquia
- Kim Polese, CEO, SpikeSource
The issues discussed ranged from IP liability to quality of open source products. Matt Asay brought up the question of what is the value proposition to the software as a service provider. Polese broke it down as hosted software services being about distribution, and open source being about development resources.