Open Source CEO Series: Mickos, Rosenberg, Powell, Soltero, and more

I’m running an Open Source CEO Series on my new blog, trying to get into the minds of the brave (and still few) open source business leaders who are turning downloads into dollars. So far, I’ve had Marten Mickos, our very own Dave Rosenberg (MuleSource), John Powell (Alfresco), and Javier Soltero (Hyperic) profiled.

Over the rest of the week, I expect to add profiles of the CEOs of Funambol, Zimbra, Vyatta, Magnolia, SugarCRM, Zenoss, and more. I’ve actually found it highly interesting to read the challenges and surprises open source has brought them, and to hear their advice on newbie open source CEOs.

For each CEO, I asked for the following information:

• Name, position, and company of executive

• Year company was founded and year you joined it

• Stage of funding and names of venture firms that have invested

• Background prior to current company (Positions held and/or something that led you to open source/where you are now)

• Biggest surprise you?ve encountered in your role with your company

• Hardest challenge you?ve had so far at your open source company

• If you could start over again from scratch, what would you do differently?

• Top three pieces of advice for would-be open source CEOs

I invite you to take a look. You’ll find that Marten Mickos finds the diversity of definitions for open source to be one of his biggest surprises in coming to open source; that Javier believes value, not open source, should be what you sell; that John would have gone to a 100% open source model from Day 1 if he could do it over again; and that Dave finds hiring to be one of the biggest challenges (but with some peculiarities to open source that make it cleaner, if not easier).