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Software Distribution Models
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Back in February, and again today, Chris Lindquist wrote in his Tech LinkLetter blog about software distribution. In "No Common Ground", he writes about the Open Source vs. AOS religious wars and in "When Good Enough is Good Enough", he writes about the benefits of software as service through ASPs and the barriers to acceptance.
In general, I agree with Chris on both takes. Like many religious wars, though, only the fanatics really care and the general citizenry is left to suffer the consequences. I would also like to add that another, albeit crumbling, barrier to corporate acceptance is the idea that IT can be a differentiator and competitive advantage for a company. If everyone is using the same "90% solution" through hosted software, that differentiator goes away. I believe this to be the customer demand that led to sforce, not simply a "mea culpa" as Chris theorizes. So, in some ways, Chris' two posts are at odds with each other. Using open source allows for infinite customization, using hosted software may not. Though, of course, one business model that applies to open source is to host customized versions of open source packages, as we're doing with the TeleInterActive Press, in integrating b2evolution and phpESP.
I do disagree with a comment made to "No Common Ground" though, as I stated in my responding comment on Tech LinkLetter.
Follow up:
That’s Not True
Posted: MAR 04, 2005 11:42:02 AM
I must disagree strongly with the comment that "most of opensource development has come through millions and millions dollars of investment from big companies including IBM, Novell and others". That’s simply not true.
Most open source development comes from individuals or small groups volunteering their time and is based in passionate devotion to a particular project.
Larger companies have been jumping on the open source bandwagon, because they see that some of these passionate developers have found a viable business model and growing market to feed their passion; witness Jabber, Inc. or MySQL AB - not to mention the Linux based vendors.
This points out another fallacy to which many folk ascribe: equating open source with the Linux OS variants. A quick review of open source distributors, such as Sourceforge, shows open source projects and applications that run on Windows, Linux, many flavours of *nix, PalmOS and other operating systems. Indeed, one hallmark of open source projects is to provide cross-platform operations.
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InterActive Systems & Consulting, Inc. (IASC) performs research in the areas of data analytics, collaboration and remote access.
InterASC Professional Services, a service mark of IASC, provides strategic consulting and project management for data warehousing, business intelligence and collaboration projects using proprietary and open source solutions. We formulate vendor-independent strategies and implement solutions for information management in an increasingly complex and distributed business environment, allowing secure data analysis and collaboration that provides enterprise information in the most valuable form to the right person, whenever and wherever needed.
TeleInterActive Networks, a service mark of IASC, hosts open source applications for small and medium enterprises including CMS, blogs, wikis, database applications, portals and mobile access. We provide the tools for SME to put their customer at the center of their business, and leverage information management in a way previously reserved for larger organizations.
