tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294880355377903512.post73450877874079099..comments2011-11-28T12:09:22.201-08:00Christopher Keenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04452233158192995749noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294880355377903512.post-54085877124349725882008-02-25T09:09:00.000-08:002008-02-25T09:09:00.000-08:00@anon<BR/><BR/>"Last Mile" problem: this is both a sizzle and a steak issue. You have to have great out of box experience (sizzle) as well as real depth in tutorials, docs, usability (steak).<BR/><BR/>"Optimize for community/commercial growth": the point here is to avoid making people pay for something they can otherwise get for free. Instead, make it possible to succeed with the free model but make it faster/safer to succeed with the commercial model. Marten Mickos calls this differentiating based on how people value there time. If you value time more than money, you should get a subscription. If you have lots of time and little money, you should be able to do anything you want with the open source version.Christopher Keenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04452233158192995749noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294880355377903512.post-7510183513612339182008-02-25T03:40:00.000-08:002008-02-25T03:40:00.000-08:00Some comments on your article;<BR/><BR/>Fix the "last mile" problem; I agree that we need to put the ribbion on the box, the documentation, management and monitoring are critical to the sucess of all projects regardless of the licencing model. In my experiance many opensorce projetcs are outstanding in this area ubuntu, mozilla, redhat, susi, smeserver all spring to mind, but sucess is all about selling the sizzle not the saussage.<BR/><BR/>Optimize for commercial and community growth; any model that reuirqers you to pay for what you used to be for free is destined to have a high failure rate (marraiage is a good example). At best paying for something that used to be for free leaves you with the feeling of being ripped off. In our free market economies we are prepared to pay for something new, somwthing extra, the promise something better even if it is just something preityer. but we won't pay (happily) for something that we once enjoyed for free. As you say later in your coments it is all about the value add! Of couse anyone with cokeacola shares will think we are wrong, they are happily making millions selling us plebs water that has always been delivered free from the sky.<BR/><BR/> Set the rules early; I agree<BR/><BR/> Don't change the rules: I agree<BR/><BR/>Implement role-based pricing; I agree with this precurser; distributing software is a bit like distributing smack/heroin, give em plenty of free dope early, then lots of cheep dope, right up until they are hooked & then you can really charge them.... this is the business model of drug lord worldwide & it is possibly even the business moddle of some very large software companies. Yes once the admins are hooked on the junk, they will pay for support!<BR/><BR/>Enable on-site and on-demand deployment; I agree<BR/><BR/>Adopt a dual license strategy- I'm not qulified to coment other than to say licencing needs to be simple to understand, the code freely avilabe & able to be modified & the propritors need to be able to feed their kids without being screwed by big players. <BR/><BR/>Again i'm not qualified comment but the WaveMaker model does sound worth of consideration.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294880355377903512.post-36853107106322466512008-02-14T12:21:00.000-08:002008-02-14T12:21:00.000-08:00Wow! That's a great response. Here are my comments:<BR/><BR/><B>Open Source Industry</B><BR/>I agree that we are not a vertical industry like IKEA, but we are a "temporary" horizontal industry in the sense that we share an open-source business model, much like the e-commerce vendors in the late 90s. I agree with you that once the open source business model is more accepted, this distinction will go away, just as it did once e-commerce became mainstream.<BR/><BR/><B>Patchwork Quilt</B><BR/>I think the licenses are less confusing to the CIO than the different business practices. With every company, the CIO must parse out what they are going to have to pay for and when. Again you are right that much of this hesitation has to do with newness as well.<BR/><BR/><B>Fix the Last Mile</B><BR/>Ease of use is really only one part of this problem. I think the point here is that because open source projects tend to bootstrap their functionality, they usually have only a fraction of the "completeness" of their commercial competitors.<BR/><BR/><B>Optimize for Community and Commercial</B><BR/>The optimization really means constantly adjusting the value proposition so that the community is a strong as possible while also enabling a sound commercial value. Changing licensing and pricing strategies are good examples of this.<BR/><BR/><B>Play by Community Rules</B><BR/>Here I think I was unclear. I agree with you that experimentation is the key to success with any entrepreneurial endeavor. The rule changes that are damaging are when the company "takes over" part of the community value chain. For example, there may be an incentive for the company to bring more prof svcs work in house at the expense of the community. So really what I should say is "don't change the rules in a way which penalizes the community users for their contributions."<BR/><BR/><B>Role-Based Licensing</B><BR/>I like your distinction of people who have more time than money. I think I'll steal it (with attribution of course, GPL not APL ;-)<BR/><BR/><B>Adopt a dual source license</B><BR/>AGPL makes sense for companies starting from scratch today. For companies with other licenses, it is probably harder to get to.<BR/><BR/>- chrisckeenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04452233158192995749noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294880355377903512.post-84628946836337346162008-02-14T09:13:00.000-08:002008-02-14T09:13:00.000-08:00Great blog posting! I found myself however disagreeing with a number of statements. :-)<BR/><BR/>Here we go:<BR/><BR/>* You say "the industry as a whole" but I happen to think that "open source" is not an industry, but a production and distribution method.<BR/><BR/>My analogy is IKEA. They have an innovative production model and they have an innovative distribution model - both of which give them better quality AND lower costs. Just like open source. But they are still categorised as a furniture company.<BR/><BR/>Events like the think tank exist because we are still innovating around production and distribution, but not (in my mind) because we would be an industry. LinuxWorld, as an example, used to be a highly popular event, but today it seems like it is shrinking, because open source vendors go to industry-specific events (like 3GSM) rather than to production-method-specific events.<BR/><BR/><BR/>* You talk about "patchwork quilt of licenses and business practices" as a barrier to enterprise adoption. Perhaps it is so, because any new scheme will feel foreign to start with. It took time for DELL to gain acceptance among enterprises as well. But I think it is not the multitude of licences and business practices that is the barrier, but just the fact that all of them are new to CIOs. Even if we could all agree on just one licence and one business practice, I bet CIOs would still hesitate essentially as much as today.<BR/><BR/><BR/>1. Fix the last mile problem" - is that really the problem? I am not sure. Many open source products initially gained acceptance because they were so fantastically easy to take into use. It didn't have all featuers, but it had ease of <BR/>use. <BR/><BR/><BR/>2. Optimize for community and commercial growth" - again I am not sure I agree with your logic. As for terminology conventions, I have usually put JBoss, Zend and us in the category of "second generation" with Linux, Red Hat, Apache, old Covalent and such in the category of "first generation". So I would call WaveMaker et co. "third generation. But that's of course just a terminology question.<BR/><BR/><BR/>3. Play by the community rules" - I continue to disagree. :-)<BR/><BR/>I wholeheartedly agree with "Set the rules early". But I also think that we should *serve* the community but not necessarily *please* it. And I think "community" is as homogeneous as "India" - i.e. not at all. For that reason, I don't see a unified set of community rules, and I don't see how you can succeed without upsetting some sub-section of the community. When you meet resistance somewhere, it may on the contrary be a sign of popularity so immense that some small group is just bound to be upset.<BR/><BR/>"Don't change the rules" - well, I would say nearly the opposite: "Have courage to experiment, because no one gets it right on the first attempt."<BR/><BR/>"the most important community building task is to create heroes within the community" - perhaps. It is an important task. But my experience is that the most important task is to be open to input from everyone, and to give recognition for whatever input you receive. In essence, to be a masterful listener.<BR/><BR/>I very much agree that "the process of creating a community is still more of a black art than science".<BR/><BR/>4. Implement role-based pricing" - Yep, I agree. I would add as a vital observation that organisations may include a multitude of roles, and an individual holding one role today may hold another one tomorrow.<BR/><BR/>They way I describe it is that some people are ready to spend time to save money. Others are ready to spend money to save time. That's in my experience the main distinction between community and commercial customers. Relatively few people and organisations go from one to the other, and most never do.<BR/><BR/>5. Enable on-site and on-demand deployment" - Yep, but I would say that this is a generic observation that is true for all software companies today. Some years from now, we may have so much on-demand business that it is an exception to provide on-site as well.<BR/><BR/>6. Adopt a dual license strategy based on AGPL (GPLv3 + affero)" - I can agree that AGPL is an interesting licence, and it may well be the licence of choice in the future.<BR/><BR/>At the same time, we are moving towards a model where as little as possible is dependent on the licence. This goes back to the fearful CIOs. We don't want to upset them with licensing intricacies, so instead we try to build a simple model that shows what extra value they get if they pay. <BR/><BR/>In summary, it seems to me that you have made a good choice of licensing and business model for WaveMaker, but I somehow felt that your Silverado rules were not a 1-to-1 framework for how you built your own model.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com