Is the open source community too clubbish for its own good? Several thought pieces Iβve seen recently got me to thinking that this might be the case, at least in terms of relevance to businesses. Dominic Sartorio makes a good case that open sourcers are increasingly balkanizing, instead of pursuing multilateral approaches that could increase adoption and help the growth of commercial open source efforts. Meanwhile, recent comments from Obsidian Systemsβ director Anton de Wet suggest that open source needs a whole new breed of business matchmakers to speed adoption from reluctant companies. Is the whole business outreach program in need of an overhaul?
Iβve followed the growth of both open source and commercial software for many years, and one thing Iβve noticed is that the evangelists operate differently in the world of commercial software. When I sit back and remember how Chris Peters, the early product manager and evangelist of Microsoft Excel, or Guy Kawasaki, the long-time Apple evangelist operated, I remember their extreme focus on what business users need. I remember their aggressive moves to communicate with the business community about products. I remember their slavish focus on getting an ease-of-use message across to potential customers.
Peters and Kawasaki were very good listeners. Itβs also impossible to put real metrics on the enormous impact they had on the world of software adoption. For example, Chris isnβt one of the more famous people out of Microsoft, but his dogged efforts to improve Excel when Lotus 1-2-3 owned the spreadsheet arena, and communicate the improvements to business users, helped Microsoft topple Lotusβ dominance. That was the key domino that needed to fall for the whole Microsoft Office suite to end up on more than 90 percent of desktops.
When I think of well-known open source evangelists, though, I think of leaders of clubs who are more focused on the righteousness of their clubs than on what business folks really want. Too often, I see stories about Linus Torvalds allegedly calling people morons or interviews with evangelists in the Linux community who seem to refuse to acknowledge that Linux, among other things, needs to offer more compatibility with the proprietary solutions that business folks use. Refusal to acknowledge truths runs rampant in the Linux community, and is a bad business practice.
Perhaps Anton de Wet is right that the open source world needs articulate go-betweens to navigate potential business users toward good, open source solutions, the potential for cost savings, and the like. He calls these βbeekeepers.β
Dominic Sartorio calls for partnerships and teamwork as ways to make open source solutions more desirable to businesses. Consider this quote from him: βHow many projects are viable and can meet enterprise requirements? Of those that can, how well do they work together and with proprietary technologies, so that larger enterprises can readily make use of them? These numbers are much smaller than they could β and should β be.β I would add that if more partnerships took place, the best evangelists could be chosen from larger pools of people.
I agree with Sartorio that events such as Sunβs $1 billion acquisition of MySQL are great PR for open source. However, to keep business adoption and the commercialization of open source really chugging along, better communication, a higher level of admission of faults, more meaningful partnerships and more need to happen.
Do you think open sourcers need more teamwork and better business-focused evangelists?
Comments
Add CommentBy on Mar. 31, 2008
Any company that really wants to survive has to learn how to serve a larger market than the hobbyists (or their moms). In order to do so, if your application is going to grow beyond a purely technical market (so, CLI for, say, httpd.conf is fine), you REALLY need to think about the the mainstream users is NOT looking to get off on cool code, but wants a BUSINESS problem solved by using any tech that fully addresses it that doesn't jam him/her down the road. This is the power of opensource, and its tragedy too....
By on Mar. 31, 2008
I think this is a very good point, and hope OStatic really bulds on this area of bringing OS into the business world.
As a developer it is useful to have a business case to get adoption from the business team, and many business guys have no idea of the OSS revolution...
Nothing to do with clubbishness. There is always a need for translators. People that can speak OSS, developer speak -- and can walk the talk -- as well as interact with suits and business people.
There are many such translators in North America, and relatively few in Europe. So, even though there are many more open source developers in Europe, there are less companies.
As business people get more educated on the value of communities and of OSS, they will see to it to build bridges.
Good points in general, Boris, but I still question "As business people get more educated..." from the perspective of that implying an us-and-them taxonomy.
As *they* get more educated, *they* will see.... I think part of how the OSS community restricts its possibilities is by not instead saying *we* need to see and *we* need to communicate well, and *we* need to educate. Otherwise it's like one cloistered camp of people waiting for the other camp to wake up.
Sam
By on Apr. 01, 2008
One thing tha I would like to see is that companies that rely on Open Source started some real research into ways to improve communication in Open Source mailing lists - that would include orignal research and active support. I think there is much to be done there. Cheap communication was Open Source eneabling factor, but after so much extensive grow in OS it starts to show off that there is much to gain by more efficient use of that communication.
Good point about better communication from open source mailing lists. Even press release distribution could become more like it's done by most established companies. Along these lines, I've used Network Solutions' Optimized Press Release service before, and they not only write releases for customers but guarantee placement on prominent sites:
http://www.networksolutions.com/press-release-services/index.jsp
By on Apr. 01, 2008
I agree. Its the ability to evangelize big business that will define their success or forever remain a niche player - something that holds true for Open source and proprietary projects alike. Not that you can't build large businesses as a niche player but you'll always play second fiddle to the Microsofts and SAPs who control marketshare
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