[consulting] Is this list dead?

[Kieran Lal]

On 3/20/07, Victor Kane <victorkane at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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/<http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/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.


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:

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.

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.

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.

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?

Open sourcing your code give these three advantages.

Kieran

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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-- 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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