I agree with Michael here. Don't underestimate the effort it takes to successfully "shepherd" a product and create a community. The true benefits of opensource come from community contributions and to create a community you need a product which is easy for others to integrate with or is so in demand that others are willing to make it easy to integrate asap. It's no different to any other kind of business, you need to understand your market.
--- Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager www.pretaweb.com tel:+61299552830 mob:+61421477460 skype:dylan_jay On 23/06/2009, at 8:38 PM, Michael Harries wrote: > I generally agree with Wayne's comments, but not with his conclusion. > > We've been down this track a number of times at Citrix. Can be > extremely valuable, but nothing comes for free. Wayne is right that > generally you get NO takeup. If you're expecting any community, > involvement, it will cost you extra dev time and lots of community > championing. Depending on the complexity of the component you may > need to provide a substantial amount of hand holding. > > Open sourcing is well worth while if: > • You have a philosophical position on open source - keeps the dev > team happy and engaged with broader community - give back, etc, etc. > - or your code is community sourced. > • You know there's a broader community aching to have a go at some > piece of code you don't care about > • You see a strategic advantage in doing it - e.g. commoditizing > some type of technology (e.g. like the Xen hypervisor :-) ), > building champions for your particular platform, etc, etc. Otherwise > it's adding headaches you don't need. > • You have lots of time and money going begging (academic, > otherwise employed, etc) > Michael > Citrix Labs > > On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Wayne Meissner > <wmeiss...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Elias had it pretty right. If its not "core", or you won't lose > anything by competitors taking your code and re-using it, then > outsource or opensource it. > > The main people who are likely to contribute to components you > opensource are going to be your customers (assuming your customer base > is a technical one). Not so much the wider world. > > Customers gain the ability to fix stuff themselves, or they can tap > into any other customers/developers (or competitors) who might have > fixed something, and you are no longer the bottleneck in fixing bugs. > This gives customers some relief from you getting hit by a bus, or > your company going down the gurgler, which some people find re- > assuring. > > However, don't expect a very wide community to form around something > you release, unless there was some pent-up need that had not been > satisfied until you released your code. 99% of opensource projects > out there have very narrow developer bases (1 or 2 people). > Especially company released stuff - tends to be pretty much the > company doing updates, unless someone else finds enough value in your > code to want to make major contributions. Most people will do just > enough to make their immediate pain go away. > > i.e. don't expect people to write code for you, and don't bank on an > awesome community forming. That does happen, but only for fairly wide > appeal software that is more of a platform. > > So, if its not core, do it. No real downside, and you might gain > something from it. Worst case, you still end up being the only > developer, you have a tiny bit of overhead in organizing releases or > hosting of the source somewhere. > > > > > > > -- > __ > Michael Harries > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself: http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/browse_thread/thread/99938a0fbc691eeb To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
