Seeking Alpha has some thoughts on the vulnerability of software companies to reduction in maintenance payments. Read the comments as well. I agree that many companies will scrutinize the value they get from maintenance contracts.

We’ve just launched a new ISV program around our certified platforms. JBoss is everywhere – now we can do a better job of working with the whole JBoss ecosystem. We’re nothing without a healthy, growing and diversified ecosystem of partners.

This graph really puts things into perspective and I really hope I’m not still looking at it in a year’s time wondering where the bottom is.

Finally (finally!!) – Judgment in SCO v. Novell: SCO Loses Again. Who – in their right mind, in the current economic conditions, would be looking to invest in SCO so they can carry on with this nonesense.

What I think he’s discovered is that there are three phases a company goes through (or that the financial markets see) :

1. Words – become an “Open Source” company by announcing your intentions, plans and roadmaps. Wall street seems to respond favorably to such announcements.

2. Action – the words have to be backed up by some action (eg. Sun’s Open Sourcing of Solaris, Java, acquiring MySQL). And that action has to make business sense. And for Wall Street – business sense is about increasing return at some point in the future. These days – Wall Street doesn’t reward action or progress – it rewards results.

3. Sustainable, repeatable success – The plans and hard work have to result in sustained revenue growth, quarter over quarter; year over year. This Sysiphean task is common to all commercial ventures; irrespective of their affinity to Open Source.

I think the remainder of the decade will prove that Open Source (as a business model) is good for business – then we’ll see an inflection as it shifts from being a differentiator (for early adopters like Red Hat and MySQL) to being the price of entry.

NB. The Jerry McGuire “Show me the Money” scene still makes me laugh out loud.