Posterita's 4th Article
Philosophical tenets of open source II by Alexandre & Frederick Tsang Mang Kin (Posterita)
We shall build on our last article and continue examining the philosophical tenets of an open source project.
3. “The Business Model Must Reinforce the Open-source Effort”
Once you open source your software, you cannot charge the users for using it. Remember, it is free to use without any obligations on their part. Hence, you must find other ways to create a business model that will allow you to benefit from your work. Here are some classic examples: Sell consulting services on the software you gave on open source. (eg Posterita, Adempiere, Redhat Linux) Sell other commodities like books which will guide you in using the software effectively. (Linux, Java) Sell hardware which is certified to work properly with your software (eg Sun Microsystem) Sell additional modules built upon the open source software (For example, you sell a module which will enable the user of the software to obtain accurate business reports) Sell the latest version and open source the previous one. For example, SugarCRM has a commercial licence for the newest version Allow users to “own it on their own machines” and sell the software as a service using the web. Again SugarCRM is a good example for that. It proposes to manage your sales force on-line against a monthly subscription fee. In many cases, it ends up being a cheaper alternative than buying and maintaining it internally. The rationale is to let the company focus on it core competencies rather than on other ancillary activities required to support its main activities.
4. Creating an open source project requires resources
Many people would think that doing an open source project is dead simple. That is not true! Attracting people, creating traffic for your project can be costly. Just making the source code available for public viewing will not attract users and developers. Resources ranging from hardware to dedicated people are required for the project. An appropriate infrastructure must be set up from a website to maintain a mailing list and a bug database among other things. You will need to allocate developers time to make the project live through the contribution of patches, fixing bugs, writing of technical and user manuals as well as animating forums. Bottom line do not count on other people if you are not committed yourself to your own project!
5.The work-in-progress effect
A major characteristic of a successful open source project is that it is always in a “work-in-progress” state. As the project generates more and more activities, volunteers will make more contributions and proposals. The project never ends. As a result, there will be a high response rate from different contributors as they will feel that the project is a collective effort where all the different people has their say, can comment, and can influence the final outcome. Responsibility among all is shared and the work is co-produced. Although opinions might differ and debates can be quite noisy and messy, the community auto-regulates itself and reaches the best decision.
The success of the project depends very much on that!
Shaffee 09:42, 22 March 2007 (EDT)
