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March 08, 2006
Commercial Open Source - Beauty and the Beast
For me I think a turning-point in my "IT career" was really hearing Doc Searls talk about DIY-IT back in 2003 at OSCON. That was when I finally understood that this Open Source "thing" I had been involved in for the past 3 years was actually part of an IT revolution that was changing the world of enterprise IT I had known since 1985. Customers were, for the first time, supplying themselves from the growing marketplace of readily available software.
Open Source has become an important part of that marketplace and one that offers corporations far more advantages than they have known in the past (whereby the licensing aspect is becoming more and more irrelevant as an argument for Open Source). Corporations are looking to Open Source as a way of being faster and more flexible in their go-to-market strategies. They see Open Source as a way of freeing themselves up from the vendor-lock-in of proprietary software vendors. But corporate IT decision makers aren't stupid. They already realize that tying themselves in to a company that provides the whole support-line for an Open Source solution may not be the kind of reduced vendor-lock-in they're after.
Another way corporations look - very pragmatically - at Open Source, is as a way of forcing proprietary software vendors to reduce their licensing fees. In fact - as I was told just recently - it makes economical sense for large corporations to build an in-house Open Source alternative for the trash-can just as a way of forcing a commercial vendor to reduce their license charges.
Reflecting on what I've been hearing out of large German corporations recently and many of the remarks have been along the lines of needing "business Open Source" and by this they don't mean a commercial company that offers SLA type support for a product that they couldn't sell and that is now Open Source. No, these companies are worried by the fact that while there are plenty of really brilliant Open Source programmers out there, too few of those understand the business problems of a particular industry and/or customer.
To these companies, top programmers are a dime-a-dozen (increasingly so) and while they obviously need the odd "expert" or committer on an Open Source project, what they really need are companies and people who understand both sides - the business ("the Beast") and Open Source software (for many "the Beauty").
So really, they couldn't give a dime if you're a die-hard year-long Open Source guru or a "born-again" commercial vendor looking to ride the wave. If you don't understand the problems of the customer then you haven't got a chance - either way.
Posted by Matthew at March 8, 2006 07:27 AM
Comments
It doesn't seem that many open source people are actually trying to solve business problems of a particular industry and/or customer.
That's where an employed developer or consultant usually comes in - integrating open-source solutions with domain expertise.
These people aren't in the position to open-source their work; so the reason that large German corporations are needing "business Open Source" is because they're not opening up their source.
Posted by: Henri Yandell at March 8, 2006 09:57 AM