<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/20/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Victor Kane</b> <<a href="mailto:victorkane@gmail.com">victorkane@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
He doesn't understand the correct business model which corresponds to the current moment.<br>His proprietary modules will cost more than he will ever make, because the cost of building "closed" software which does not benefit from community input in all phases of the production cycle is huge.
<br><br>Send him a bound copy of The Cathedral and the Bazaar.<br><a href="http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/
</a><br>
<br>Microsoft has just spent 20 billion dollars on a system no-one needs.<br>IBM is embracing the open source model in part, because it sees that proprietary software is simply the wrong model.</blockquote><div><br>Most of IBM's profits in the $90 Billion+ in revenue come from their proprietary software. There are no plans to stop being one of the largest proprietary software vendors, and most profitable profitable software vendors. Among the reasons they support open source are:
<br><br>1) In industries they had lost, e.g. windows, open source would allow them to complete a solution stack, with linux, for their customers with ensuring their competitors did not have lock in control over IBM's customers.
<br><br>2) IBM's profitable solutions failed to attract talent the way Oracle lured DBAs, and Microsoft lured programmers. In order for IBM to compete they needed the talent to work on and support their solutions, and embracing open source was an effective talent rallying cry.
<br><br>3) IBM's unique support of hundreds, if not thousands of hardware systems meant the costs of maintaining compatibility across these systems was too great to be profitable and supported. Open source, was open and was architected to be platform agnostic which meant IBM could reduce their platform costs by phasing out proprietary OSes, and supporting mostly Linux and Windows as their customers wanted.
<br></div><br>The lessons to take away are: Can you fend off your competitors by reducing the competitive advantage to the cost of deployment? Can you acquire the talent you need to grow your business? Can you ensure you are not constrained by any one platform?
<br><br>Open sourcing your code give these three advantages.<br><br>Kieran<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">That doesn't mean that certain parts of the system, which encapsulate his business case, cannot remain "secret". But he should embrace a design which abstracts as much funcionality out of his business case as possible, so that this is kept to a minimum. He should separate all his business logic into one or two proprietary but simple modules that do nothing but invoke other, more complicated and open source modules which perform more generic services.
<br><br>That's the spirit.<br><span class="sg"><br>Victor Kane<br><a href="http://awebfactory.com.ar" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://awebfactory.com.ar</a><br> <br></span>
<div><div><span class="e" id="q_1116f4efdedd5372_3"><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/20/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael Haggerty</b> <
<a href="mailto:mhaggerty@trellon.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">mhaggerty@trellon.com</a>> wrote:</span></span></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="EN-US">
<div><div><span class="e" id="q_1116f4efdedd5372_5">
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Haven't seen much activity on this list for a while.
Is this list dead, or are we all just very busy?</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">An interesting story: without naming names, a friend of mine
is starting a business. He is developing a platform that will use Drupal as the
framework to deliver a specialized service and putting a lot of work into it. Part
of his hook is that he will not be open sourcing some of the custom modules
which are part of the platform in order to maintain a competitive advantage
(i.e., if someone else wants to get into this market, they would have to build
something themselves).</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">While I see the benefits of this from a business standpoint,
it does raise an interesting question about proprietary software. One of the
main advantages of open source is the cost of labor, you can have dozens of
people worldwide working on the same piece of software. Supposedly, the quality
of the product goes up as it filters through peer review and the expertise of
multiple individuals. The particular modules this person is working on are not
really 'understood' by the Drupal community (otherwise, someone
else would have already built them). What I am trying to wrap my head around
is, does losing this advantage detract from any others? Does losing peer review
and contributed labor undermine other advantages to open sourcing a creation? From
a programmers perspective, I can't really understand why he's
choosing a proprietary route for development other than the idea that few
others would really be interested in working on this particular module.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Thank
you,<br>
Michael Haggerty<br>
Managing Partner<br>
Trellon, LLC<br>
</span></font><a href="http://www.trellon.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">http://www.trellon.com</span>
</font></a><br>
<font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">(p)
301-577-6162<br>
(c) 240-643-6561<br>
(f) 413-691-9114<br>
(aim) haggerty321</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></font></p></span></div>
</div>
</div><span class="q">
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