The wrong marketing for open source
Open-source advocates for years have waved the banners of "freedom" and "no vendor lock-in" to sell the value of open source. It hasn't worked. Chief information officers don't buy vague concepts. They buy high-quality software at a compelling price. To better market open-source software to the world, open-source advocates need to match their message to what CIOs actually want to buy.
(Credit:
Software Freedom Day Philippines)
The problem I have with free-software advocates like Richard Stallman is that they think freedom is the primary reason to use open-source software. It's not. Utility is.
After all, we're not talking about essential human rights here. We're talking about getting work done with software.
Over the past 10 years I and the companies with which I've worked have sold hundreds of millions of dollars in open-source software/services. Not once have I been asked about "freedom." For that matter, I've also never heard a customer gush about reduced vendor lock-in.
To the contrary, I've met with CIOs and CTOs who have explicitly told me that this isn't a top consideration for them. Just last week, in fact, I moderated a panel at LinuxCon in which I asked senior IT executives from leading media companies if vendor lock-in is a primary motivation for using open source. Nope.
They have work to do. They want software that helps them get their work done and gets out of the way. That's what open source does.
For those of us who make a living selling services around open-source software, it's not enough to trumpet freedom. No one buys that. A CIO might intuitively know that open source and open standards tend to ensure lower exit costs (i.e., the cost of moving to an alternative vendor/software product), but her primary concern today is the need to squeeze more productivity out of a significantly lower IT budget.
If open-source vendors want to get her attention, they had better be pitching high value for low dollars, not freedom. Freedom is something that gets considered once the CIO has already recognized upfront cost savings in a fully operational IT project.
Even then, CIOs don't think of it as "freedom." They think of open source, as The 451 Group's Matt Aslett suggests, as "flexibility, performance, and reliability." These are the long-term benefits that drive CIOs to invest in open source long term, but they start with short-term cost savings and a successful IT project.
Forrester is now projecting a 9.3 percent drop in U.S. IT spending in 2009, according to ZDNet. Want to help a CIO? Find her a way to avoid the reported $6.2 trillion in IT project failure using open source, so that her more limited budget can still pay for the work she needs to get done.
This is what Novell did by helping The Burton Corporation shave 80 percent of its server costs by moving from Unix to Suse Linux Enterprise Server. That's real money. That's tangible. That's open source.
Don't sell her on "freedom" and open source as "magic pixie dust." Right now, she can't afford it. Freedom is something that she'll appreciate over time, and it will reveal itself in terms of additional development flexibility and lower budget requirements to get things done.
Sell the CIO on open source's value, in terms of cost and quality, as Forrester reports. That's the marketing message she needs to hear right now.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
But many CIOs are actually looking for "Freedom", and more so than just the entry costs: the freedom for their teams to fix bugs themselves, the freedom to get those fixes returned into the core product, the freedom to extend, enhance, and integrate into their other systems. If that was your meaning all along ... sorry that some of us misunderstood! Perhaps the extremes of your invective got in the way.
When a company's looking at software solutions I can't imagine they're not concerned with future costs, especially when companies like Oracle have recently increased their support package charges by significant amounts so when an open source support provider is asked "what's my guarantee this isn't an 'introductory' charge?" the answer is easy. Yes, it has to be software of a sufficient quality to do the job but if it's easily good enough and the exit cost is lower thus guaranteeing support levels and cost in the long term then I doubt any CIO, CFO or CEO is going to ignore that.
Anyway, I won't be expecting any reply to this, I'm often rude and abrasive and I don't think you like me much for that which is a shame (and yes, my own fault) as I've always appreciated the manner in which you post which is thoughtful and respectful towards others which is why it's odd to see an increasing number of personal snipes in your posts. I've always tried to keep it respectful towards you even when I disagree with you strongly because you are respectful towards others (you'll notice I don't show any hostility towards MS advocates who act honestly and respectfully) but you're starting to let it slide.
The other thing is you also have to look at the advantages of free software from an individual standpoint. As an individual because of the open source nature of some of the software I use I have been able to go in and tinker with the code (especially on LAMP applications) and deploy them in my spare time for local non profits. This accessibility gives non profits the ability to gather interns from universities for little to no money and leverage technology for far FAR less money than would be available if they used closed source options. Yes, many non profits do get discounts on software, but at the same time they often have very unique needs and gain more than your average enterprise CIO from the open nature of free software.
As you can see from my example there are situations where the open nature of FOSS, the "freedom" if you will is more important than others. There are similar unique advantages to open source in say higher education, which is a full on enterprise environment with a very non profit flavor. I do Quality Assurance work on Kuali (http://www.kuali.org) which is open source for exactly these reasons. So the real lesson is not that "freedom" is not the point and that we need to focus on practical advantages. The lesson we should be taking from this conversation is that "freedom" can be a practical advantage, and to know when it can and can't be leveraged as one, and how best to leverage it as a practical advantage when making a sell.
There is also no reason why the ideological conversation should not happen. Practical people and philosophical people have existed since the beginning of humanity, and quite honestly we keep each other in check. Systems that grow out of philosophical purity have a far better basis for avoiding corruption, and keeping to their philosophical roots while reaching for the practical "get work done" sky with their leaves and branches bears the best fruit.
Which is a really good thing, and pretty much what I was pushing for all these years.... The downside is that it's not the new, exciting, revolutionary, cutting edge thing anymore, there are other, more interesting technology problems to solve. And it's not much of a competitive differentiators these days either, although it has become a key enabler of a variety of new software offerings and has pushed the cost of building software systems much lower.
I think the key trends are pulling open source in two different directions. One is going towards massive almost monopolistic infrastructure software (Apache httpd style), the other is highly vertical specific custom systems, esp. in the consumer space (Tivo/Boxee/Android), but also in all kinds of invisible quasi-embedded systems.
Neither of these are particularly interesting in themselves for CIOs, who just want to solve business problems with the lowest possible cash outlay, and the days of great uniform horizontal software ala Microsoft are probably over.
Chris.
For SME businesses, price is more of a topic than CIO's of mutlinational with a couple of millions to spare though. Vendor lock-in per se is then no an argument per se, but when that argument is connected with more competition for say development work is becomes relevant.
So: connect freedom with lower cost and you have a good seconday argument for selling the software (primary being, as you say, the quality of the software).
You're right, but you were right the last 700 times you wrote this exact same article. Who's your audience supposed to be? People who read CNet regularly aren't going to be any more (or less) convinced by the same arguments than they were the last dozen times you made them; are you just trying to keep your Google News results fresh in the hopes that a random audience will see your points for the first time?
> is that they think freedom is the primary reason to use open-source
> software. It's not. Utility is. After all, we're not talking about essential
> human rights here.
Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation, of course he is going to support the viewpoint that he does. Is 'the problem that [you] have with' Arnold Schwarzenegger the fact that is the governor of California?
For many people, Freedom IS the reason to use Free software; the Open Source development model may be a good one but if I don't have the freedoms to access and control my computer and data, I am putting my destiny in the hands of another. This is a human rights issue: the right to speech, to privacy, to live without overlords. How can we know software is trustworthy? The Open Source development model can help, but the Freedoms from Free Software allow me to know for sure and to change it if I so choose. Open Source doesn't allow this by definition; Free Software does, and it cannot be taken away.
It seems to come down to this: You want software which is accessible by a business. Rather than understand licenses or try to explain a license to a CEO, its easier to avoid the issue and sell them on cost and security benefits, among others. That is great. But without Free Software, those things wouldn't exist, and if we shun Free Software we risk losing them again with a washed out and weakened term, Open Source.
It all depends what you mean by 'basic human rights'. If those include the right to communicate, the right to inform, then the tools you use to do that better be free.
As usual you display an alarming lack of understanding of free software.
Freedom IS utility.
The freedom to add, alter, distribute code allows for all the utility you will ever need, plus more.
It is proprietary that place a ceiling(often very low) on utility.
I think that you really need to stop trying to destroy the GPL with your articles(I can see unlike these people that it is the ultimate goal just like is Jason Perlow's goal), your company has profited from the GPL right. Also your asking to somehow stop waving the FREEDOM Flag; WHAT? You know what that will mean, it will mean getting rid of the GPL which is the same reason why LINUX as a whole exists. OPEN SOURCE is not FOSS period so please stop spreading this filth. All the FOSS community got is ideology and if this means it will take us another 20 years to gain 0.1% market share than so be it. If you want to inter-operate so badly then go use Microsoft software, yes is as simple as that. NO one and I mean no one forces IT folks or CIOs to USE GNU LINUX, they use it because is FREE as in COST and FREEDOM. Think of how many projects would not exists if the GPL was not around, right now we would not have Ubuntu, Redhat or OpenSuse. So for you to say we need a new Marketing strategy is bogus. Why don't you defend the GPL instead, don't compromise with Microsoft or any other vendor whom chooses to wave the paten flag. When you compromise you admit defeat period. And this goes to all you IT folks who benefit from using LINUX if you have such a ******** problem with it then DON'T USE IT! PAY FOR MICROSOFT's PRODUCTs THEY WILL BE HAPPY TO SCREW YOU!
I don't know why you think that having the freedom to alter a source code is not a utility. Even if I paid the $X00's or $X000's for the proprietary softwares that are out there I would not want to use them as much as I do open source software.
Why?
Because these egg heads try to shovel Pandora's Box inside your software, attempting to use precognitive vision to forsee what their end user is going to try and accomplish.
With open source the choice is obvious. If the option is not available, make it! Tell that to your CIO and CTO friends, sent care of Tyler Starke.
- by fazalmajid October 4, 2009 11:09 PM PDT
- The main reason why Matt does not meet CIOs interested in in open source is that his audience is self-selected. CIOs who go to expensive trade shows and conferences tend to be those for whom fiscal discipline has not yet struck.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(17 Comments)Of course, just because software is open-sourced doesn't make it good, and in many case open source solutions are not available at all. That said, a serviceable open-source option is generally preferable to a commercial one in the long run. I was a CTO. I pretty much mandated open-source software. We used Oracle because open-source alternatives were not viable then, but today I would have an entirely open-sourced stack. Then again, I was not the kind of CTO to waste my company's resources on trade shows and other junkets of dubious business values. We would send our salespeople there.