[consulting] Is this list dead?

[Victor Kane]

He doesn't understand the correct business model which corresponds to the
current moment.
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.

Send him a bound copy of The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/

Microsoft has just spent 20 billion dollars on a system no-one needs.
IBM is embracing the open source model in part, because it sees that
proprietary software is simply the wrong model.

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.

That's the spirit.

Victor Kane
http://awebfactory.com.ar

On 3/20/07, Michael Haggerty <mhaggerty at trellon.com> wrote:
>
>  Haven't seen much activity on this list for a while. Is this list dead,
> or are we all just very busy?
>
>
>
> 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).
>
>
>
> 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.
>
> Thank you,
> Michael Haggerty
> Managing Partner
> Trellon, LLC
> http://www.trellon.com
> (p) 301-577-6162
> (c) 240-643-6561
> (f) 413-691-9114
> (aim) haggerty321
>
>
>
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>
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