Subject: (no subject)
From: Arnaldo Riquelme (ajr@dynacap.com)
Date: Tue Sep 03 2002 - 09:19:56 AKDT
http://www.mindview.net/Etc/FAQ.html#OpenSource
Why do you think open source works?
This is the question that comes up a lot with open software: "If we give
away the cow, how do we make money?" So far, the only answer is in cow
maintenance: people really just want the milk from a reliable cow. If you
sell them a cow in a closed box, then they don't really know what's going
on, whether the cow is sick or dead (Microsoft has been selling sick cows -
some would say with mad cow disease -- for a long time now, and getting away
with it because they are in boxes), or most importantly whether the cow can
be healed or not. So it appears customers are all for just having the whole
cow. But now they have the thing and don't know how to service it. Since
it's working so well, people don't seem to mind paying for upgrades, for
example (and upgrades haven't been that expensive -- the latest version of
Red Hat, 6.2, is something like $25 at Costco), and service agreements from
companies like IBM. You get a better cow for free, and you can get support
if you want to pay for it. One of the nice things about this model is that
you actually pay for support, whereas with the old model the company would
already have your money when you bought the product, and sure, sure, we
provide support too -- but that actually appeared to cost them money, so
they tried to minimize those costs and you end up with difficult and
not-very-useful support systems. Whereas if support IS the product, then it
had better be good or the customer won't pay for it.
Because the source is open, a company can build on it rather than creating a
product from scratch, so add-ons become a possibility. Autodesk was so
successful because it allowed third party add ons to enhance the product.
Is that all? I have the sense that there might be something else that would
be a way to make money with free stuff. The key, as we know but the
marketing people always seem to miss, is to try to figure out "what do
people want?" The answer in the computer arena is that they want work done
for them (that's what computers do). I suppose the other area has something
to do with services, possibly like those services that provide you with
things like databases for your web site, and email list managers, etc., so
that all you have to do is hook these pieces together without doing the
programming or maintenance yourself
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