Why a business should go Open Source ? [kwiqq]

Posted on | May 7, 2009 | View Comments

Open Source software has seen great adoption over the last few years. Linux is often quoted as a fantastic example of open source software, competing directly with companies like Microsoft. Open source:

• Free redistribution: no restrictions on further distributions.
• Availability of the source code: either with program or through download.
• Derived works: rights to copy, modify and re-distribute software.
• Integrity of the author’s source code: may restrict distribution of modified source code only if allow distribution of “patch files” with the source code.
• Non-discriminatory: against persons, groups or fields of endeavour, and not product specific.
• Licence form – distribution must be permitted without need to execute further documentation
• Technology neutral and not restrictive of other software.

The Wrong Reasons

Get Free Developers on-board

Many companies planning to go open source do it for the wrong reason. For many, it is to get other developers working on their software i.e. crowd-sourcing, using the collective intelligence of several users. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way, there are about 230,000 open source software on SourceForge alone. To get developers building for your project, a company requires one or all of these:

1. Marketing budget: Often resources are required to inform developers on the project in the first place. To truly get people to know about your project it requires a PR Agency to spread the word. If you are a small-medium enterprise and have that sort of budget you might as well employ developers to build your project.
2. Existing community: Open Source project also require a group of developers who are passionate about your product. This generally takes some time to form, we are talking years as oppose to months.
3. Out of the world idea: If you were planning something unique and managed to get into the limelight really quickly. There is a chance that this pulls in the developers. Although the percentage of projects which fall under this category is tiny.

From the above its clear that developers volunteering for your open source project are hard to find. You need something substantial to attract them.

Source of publicity and marketing

Many developers feel open sourcing software helps them get significant PR. I guess it might have been the case when open source was relatively a new concept. Now its become part and parcel of several companies online strategy. The volume of open source software out there means that your Open Source product will not become the talk of the town unless it does something extraordinary. For that matter any software which does something miraculous whether open source or not will get people using and adopting it.

The Correct Reasons

There are three things we feel make open source a credible route to go down:

Community confidence

Usually open source software developers sell tailor-made software, packaged software or services incorporating the code they have made available. Winning the confidence of the community is half the battle won. Open sourcing makes the software available for assessment by independent developers.

Selling to technology specialists

If you have sold software to companies where technologist are driving the innovation, you will certainly  appreciate the sales cycle which one needs to go through. Having a demo site and code available for due-diligence makes the sales cycles considerably smaller. Also it opens door for selling other services on the back of your code.

Knowledge sharing

Many technologist feel the best way to learn a programming language is to develop something and put it out there for feedback. Knowledge sharing not only helps devs learn programming but also gets new developers to learn from you. Guidance from experts in the area helps develop, style of coding and building code which is more future proof.

Overall open sourcing software could be profitable and useful for the company, if done for the correct reason !

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