Most commercial software vendors, though slow to wake up to this new reality, are beginning to move aggressively to court developer populations and update their engagement and outreach capabilities. Instead of relying strictly on an enterprisefocused sales force, armies of technical evangelists and developer engagement professionals are being unleashed on unwitting developer populations in an attempt to ensure a given software vendor’s relevance for the population most likely to be making technical decisions.

The problem facing software vendors, however, is that while recognizing the problem is indeed the first step, the solution is less than obvious. Commercial software vendors are particularly disadvantaged, because they are compelled to compete in a two-front war with both free software and software made available as a service. From a competitive standpoint, this means downward pressure on price with potentially higher costs driven by a need to compete with different models.