One of the things that we open sourcerors need to figure out - or which the market needs to figure out - is the convenience of purchasing proprietary software. By this I don't mean any particular vendor's policies: I'm talking about the basic act of buying something that masquerades as property.
For better or (in my view) for worse, the industry knows how to buy proprietary software. Increasingly, thanks to the pull of Red Hat and Salesforce.com, it's getting used to subscription-based pricing, too.
As I re-discovered today on a call with a prospective customer, however, we still have a long way to go, because as an industry we don't really do a good job of quantifying the value of support. In the case of this prospect, as well as others with whom I meet, support gets low-man-on-the-totem-pole status when it comes to purchasing. They know there's value in it, and they even know that they need it (at least, initially), but given a choice they'll often skip it.
... Read MoreCasey Coleman, chief information officer for the U.S. General Services Administration, said in a speech this week that the GSA heavily relies on open source to drive down costs, increase flexibility of IT dollars, and reduce risk.
The GSA, by the way, is no small fry. It manages more than one-fourth of the federal government's total procurement dollars and influences the management of $500 billion in federal assets.
The agency uses a laundry list of great open-source software--initially for its information systems but also increasingly for transactional mission-critical systems--such as JBoss, Linux (Red Hat), Bugzilla (bug tracking), JUnit (testing), JMeter (Apache performance monitoring tool), Eclipse, KnowledgeTree (content management), and others.
Coleman cited some excellent reasons for deploying open-source software:
By using open source, the agency won't be locked in to using a proprietary software program, at least for the duration of the contract.
Not having sunk costs in a commercial software program also means the agency can move to a new program more quickly should its needs change. The general openness also means the agency could become a collaborator in the further development of the software itself.
"You get much more transparency and interoperability, and that reduces your risk," she said.
When the GSA, the organization that influences the purchasing for the rest of the U.S. federal government, buys heavily into open source, you know it's time for the rest of the government to do so, as well. In fact, it already is--at least, 55 percent of it.
Ms. Coleman, I want my tax dollars to stretch a bit further, though. Please instruct the rest of the government to buy into open source much more actively. Thanks!
The technology office of the federal government's Defense Information Systems Agency has gone on the record as saying that the defense procurement process needs to be altered in order to better mesh with open-source software. I agree 100 percent.
But it's not just federal procurement that needs to change. For anyone who has sold open-source software subscriptions into any enterprise, you know that legal and purchasing departments everywhere have a lot to learn about open source.
But at least the Defense Department is getting the picture. Fritz Schulz, who works in the office of the chief technology officer at the Defense Information Systems Agency, spoke on the topic last week at a Red Hat conference. Here's what he said, according to Government Computer News:
Although current policies adequately accommodate open-source acquisition, the requirements analysis that defense agencies undertake to get new software should be executed differently, "to allow for proper consideration of open source," he said.
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I had a great lunch with associates from rSmart, Unicon, and MIT today at the JA-SIG Conference, and we talked about a vexing issue that plagues software, open source and proprietary alike (though it hurts the open source vendor more): the high cost of sales. (I credit John Lewis, Chief Software Architect, Unicon, for any intelligence in my musings, and take full blame for the inane shrapnel that is my personal contribution to the thread.)
The proprietary world's P&L operates much like the VC's: high, upfront return (license) to cover the expense that Purchasing puts vendors through to earn its business. (Repeat visits, RFPs, etc.) In other words, the proprietary vendor spends five figures on five deals to hopefully get a "home run" return on one of them to subsidize and exceed the costs.
Open source vendors operate differently, as Larry Augustin pointed out at OSBC. [PDF] Open source vendors are about volume in leads, with the leads finding their way back to the company to purchase. Four figures (or less, often) to close a deal, with the intention being that more deals within the pipe will close.
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