現今開放原始碼軟體逐漸受到企業用戶的重視，有鑑於一些開放原始碼軟體只有社群支援，而企業需要專屬的技術顧問，便出現以提供開放原始碼軟體相關服務之創業公司。使用開放原始碼的精神開創公司本質上具備不少優勢，例如：協同社群開發可降低開發成本、透過設計不同授權條款的限制迅速擴大使用者的規模……等。然而，開放原始碼軟體產業的績效表現仍與專屬軟體廠商相去甚遠，Ovum預估2008年整個Linux軟體產業產值近九億美元，僅佔微軟2007年營收的1.7 %。既然開放原始碼軟體廠商的優勢這麼多，利用開放原始碼軟體營利的小公司也這麼多，為何在獲利上都不見起色？本研究企圖從經營模式的觀點探索開放原始碼初創公司的創業過程，透過解析其經營模式結構及演進過程，希望能提供開放原始碼創業者一個基礎的思維。 本研究使用紮根理論搭配個案研究法，以Canonical公司作為研究個案，Canonical公司創立於2004年10月，以銷售Ubuntu (Linux 延伸版本) 相關產品及服務為主，本研究發現 (1) Canonical公司的經營模式為結合內部員工及價值網路 (開發者社群及互補配套商) 力量共同發展及推廣產品；提供免費產品、開放產品原始碼、及採用GPL授權方法吸引使用者， (2) Canonical公司的經營模式結構之演進過程分成兩階段：第一階段發展重點是吸引使用者及凝聚社群力量；第二階段創新發展重點則為創造互補性資產及加強產品設計， (3) Canonical經營模式的演進過程有路徑相依的情形，前一階段活動會影響後一階段活動之發展， (4) Canonical 並未設計其經營模式來善加運用開放原始碼本質上的優勢。藉由分析Canonical的經營模式，了解經營模式有其結構，且此結構會不斷地演進，因此每家公司可以找出自己的經營模式結構，進而思考如何設計自己的經營模式，以達到企業獲利的經營目標。 Nowadays enterprises pay much attention to open source software and gradually adopt it into businesses. Companies who use enterprise software always require software provider dedicating to support not only software itself but also related technical services or total solutions. However, it’s communities rather than dedicated software companies that support most services or solutions in the open source software industry. To take opportunities, some entrepreneurs started up companies to provide services related to open source software. In fact, the nature of open source software leads to many advantages such as reducing cost by collaborating with communities and rapid enlarging the scale of users by designing different license provisions. Unfortunately, the performance of overall open source industry is much less than that of proprietary software firms. For example, Ovum estimated the output total value of the Linux industry in 2008 is merely 1.7% of a small share of revenue of Microsoft's revenue in 2007. Accordingly, from business model perspective, this study attempts to explore the newly established process of a start-up open source company. By importing grounded theory with case study qualitative research method to explore the business model structure of Canonical Ltd. who sells Ubuntu and related services, we found that (1) Canonical collaborate with communities and complementors to develop products and to promote products, respectively, (2) the evolutionary business model of Canonical could be separated into two phases: the first phase focuses on attracting users as well as cohere the power of communities while the second phase focuses on creating complementary assets and designing the best experience products, (3) some of the evolution process in the two phases is path-dependency, and (4) Canonical didn’t gain advantage of the nature of open source software very well. By analyzing the business model structure of Canonical, the results of this study would give entrepreneurs the deep insights about business model and thus deliberate on how to design business model within highly uncertain environment.
