Don Park made several blog posts about open source 'wolves' "shredding value" by duplicating proprietary functionality.

I guess that makes us trained wolves.

I look at calls for a Meetup replacement and announcements (Om, Rubel) of Rojo, a new web-based feed reader, and I start thinking about how we can implement that functionality. Actually, Drupal already has the features of Meetup: groups, events, and the subscriptions module for email notification.

The list of "unique to Rojo" features would likely take about 4 weeks to implement in Drupal. And then anyone could run a Rojo. And maybe enable interesting things along the way: if everyone with a Drupal site has their users "tagging" feeds, those feed tags could be aggregated somewhere, across sites. Maybe Rojo itself will help enable the return of ENT.

But it's clear that just hopping on board the feature train isn't going to cut it. Aggregation, like social networking, is a feature, not a business model.

Chris Brauer makes a related post today:

The Open Source movement is in the process of shifting space and no industry or pursuit will be immune. It reflects a social ethic where economic gain is only a single element in a broader lifestyle. It makes self evident the benefits of working together to mutual gain.
Chris Brauer: Drupal Open Source Case Study

So businesses need to be aware of open source. When does it make sense to leverage existing open source functionality? What differentiates your business from open source "competition"?

In Rojo's case, their user interface and user experience may help them win out, or perhaps they can become something beyond their site by aggregating ratings and tags. For Meetup, it may be that they are a hosted service. Both have value, but at the end of the day the value is not tied to proprietary functionality or features.

Once an example of something exists -- that doesn't depend on other, proprietary technologies -- expect your software to be cloned in the open source world. Better yet, practice dancing with the wolves ahead of time: everybody will come out ahead.