SearchCRM.com: First of all, can you give us an update on the company?

John Roberts: It’s kind of a surreal time in that things are going real well for us, but the world economy isn’t doing so good. With all recessions, you get the 20% of companies that actually do incredibly well. For us, the global recession has really put a focus on two things. One is companies re-evaluating their information technology costs, and two, now more than at any time since the Great Depression, competitive advantage has been the most important thing for companies.

We’re seeing a big shift here to commercial open source as a more efficient and innovative method [of delivering applications]. This recession is certainly highlighting our value proposition versus our competitors. We’ve seen our product surge since Q3 of last year.

SugarCRM CEO: ‘In a way, open source and the cloud are the same thing’

I used to laugh when Microsoft ignorantly slandered open source as “anti-American” because the inverse was so clearly the case (PDF chapter from Open Sources 2.0).

Now Forbes, hardly a bastion of communist thought, is running an article that profiles several prominent open-source capitalists, including Brian Behlendorf (Apache, CollabNet), John Roberts (SugarCRM), and Rod Johnson (SpringSource). It turns out that these entrepreneurs have found winning ways to turn open source into cash.

Open source: It’s about capitalism, not freebies | The Open Road – CNET News