Comments on: Do customers want open core?

By: 451 CAOS Theory » Economy up or down, can open source come out on top?

451 CAOS Theory » Economy up or down, can open source come out on top? — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:45:54 +0000

[...] to sales and marketing, longevity, economic and developer opportunity, open core, etc., it all boils down to the community, which in a good economy tends to drive innovation and [...]

By: Customers Drive Open Core | Likewise Blog

Customers Drive Open Core | Likewise Blog — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:14:38 +0000

[...] | Good Reads, Open Source Software | Jerry Carter Jay Lyman has hit the nail on the head on the 451 CAOS blog regarding the open core debate. The primary reason vendors are exploring open core as a model is [...]

By: Jay Lyman

Jay Lyman — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:22:10 +0000

Thanks for posting, Ned. I think xTuple is a good example of a company leveraging an open core model because that’s what works for you and your customers, and not because VC backers are advocating or pushing it. I know we also both agree on the significance of a supported, vibrant community (including free version) for this open source stuff to work.

By: Ned Lilly

Ned Lilly — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:05:40 +0000

Agree, Jay, that flexibility is the watchword for customers.

At xTuple, we’ve got the FOSS open core PostBooks Edition, and the commercially licensed Standard and Manufacturing Editions. Commercial license can be either annual subscription or traditional perpetual (and you’d be surprised how many continue to opt for the latter).

xTuple runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux – on-premise, in a partner data center, or in the Amazon cloud.

Too much of the chatter/wisdom about open source business models has always been driven by VCs, in the opinion of this self-financed profitable vendor

Cheers,
Ned

By: Jack Repenning

Jack Repenning — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:51:49 +0000

To return to the core question of the post: actually, yes, I think some customers really *do* want “open source” — in fact, some customers really do want “free software.” But just as there’s a bit of cultural divide among providers (free source, open source, open core, proprietary), so also is there a divide among customers.

Interestingly, there’s some real tendency for customers who “just want something that works” to be non-users; corporate IT buyers and the like. Conversely, there’s some tendency for “live free or die” customers to be front-line actual users. And the reason’s not hard to find: a CIO has no practical expectation of fixing a problem or adding a feature or taking over stewardship of the whole project, anyway; whereas many front-line users not only *could* do these things, but actually *do* (of such are communities made).

It was trendy, not so long ago, to conduct and publish survey after redundant survey documenting that most companies *use* open source, while most CIOs think they do not. We seem to be getting over that, which may make the time right for surveys documenting that most customers *need* open source, while most CIOs think they do not.

By: Jay Lyman

Jay Lyman — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:30:32 +0000

No, Henrik, you are not being a nitpick. I think I anticipated your point, which is valid. I do think that perceptually among customers, the SLAs, indemnity and certifications to which I refer are available primarily through vendors, commercial licensing and subscriptions. However, these are things that a pure open source vendor could provide. Still, I believe my point — that customers want freedom and flexibility to use free, open source community versions and also to pay (as they are sometimes required to) for non-open source features and functionality if they so choose — is valid. Perhaps a better example would be that customers typically want the higher-level features and functionality, such as remote administration or support for virtualized or cloud computing environments, that come as non-open source in an open core model.

Thanks for posting.

By: Jack Repenning

Jack Repenning — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:26:50 +0000

Yes: I think this post may be comparing “communities at their best” against “corporations at their norms,” which might not be entirely fair. Henrik’s point is, roughly, “companies aren’t *necessarily* evil.”

However, I do think that communities are much more likely to be open, flexible, and responsive than corporations. Not because companies are necessarily evil, but because they’ve some tendency to become so when under duress: if you’re scraping for that last dime just to survive, you’re more likely to cross the boundaries of civility. Communities, on the other hand, may also become desperate, but their most effective and common response is to become more open, welcoming, and flexible. So, it’s not the “best to average” comparison that’s key, but the “worst to worst.”

And in the very very worst-to-worst case: proprietary code is in desperate danger of ceasing to exist along with its company, whereas community code can live even after the community completely dies, and can revive and grow again. “Can,” not necessarily “will,” but still …

By: Henrik Ingo

Henrik Ingo — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:08:10 +0000

Am I being a total nitpick, but… a vendor could offer SLAs, indemnity and certifications and none of those makes the vendor open core (they don’t require closed source software), nor is open core required for it.