Open source projects need to be more customer focussed if they are to succeed in the corporate marketplace, according to several companies attending the Holland Open Software Conference in Amsterdam this week.
Alan Williamson, an open source evangelist at IT services company SpikeSource, said that one reason open source projects fail is that some developers do not think about the features that customers will need. For example, many projects have poor documentation and some even omit relatively basic features such as a tool to uninstall the application, Williamson said.
"One thing we've done at SpikeSource is work on how to uninstall a project. The project leader didn't even think about the need to uninstall it, but the harsh reality is that users do uninstall applications," said Williamson, speaking at a session on how to bring open source to the mainstream on Monday.
Marcel den Hartog, the European director of advanced technology at Computer Associates, agreed that open source project teams are not always aware of what corporate customers want. He told the audience at the conference that support, including support for older versions of the software, is an essential requirement for open source projects that want to succeed in enterprises.
"One of the things I hate about the open source community is that they only talk about two versions — the current version and the future version," said Hartog. "We have clients who will pay us to support really old versions of software — they don't want to change their production environment because it works."
Hartog noted that open source software often gets into companies through the back door — for example, it is used in a testing environment and is then ported to the production environment. But this can cause problems as the developer who initially chose and installed the software is typically not responsible for supporting it — instead operational staff are left supporting a new type of software that they may not know how to support.
"Operational people hate change — if you change something and it breaks then operational people get kicked around. That's how open source software gets a bad name in big companies," said Hartog. "The management, procurement staff and auditors are not happy as they don't know who it's from, who to call when it goes wrong and they don't have a service level agreement."
A project roadmap is another feature that is important for open source projects that want to attract corporate users, according to Matthew Langham, the leader of the open source group at German software company S&N. He said that many open source projects do not have a roadmap, but users are often keen to know when features are due to be added.
Some open source projects have already accepted the need to be customer-focussed. Bart Decrem, a marketing contact for the Mozilla Foundation, said last year that one of the reasons why the Firefox browser has been so successful is because it focused on making the browser more easy to use.
"We have spent 10 years watching how people use stuff, for example, tab browsing came from watching people visit the same Web sites every day. Too often the Linux community lives in a bubble — there is not enough interaction with end users," said Decrem.
Talkback
Great, more FUD from another company that has never contributed anything substantial to the open source community. For this gentlemen information, there are plenty of ways people can get support nowadays, including red hat, ibm ,etc. and "rpm -e packagename" will uninstall applications in RPM-baed distributions.
What is happening is that these gentlemen got 12 million dollars in funding that they need to justify and they have no idea of what they are doing.
So true of what is said.
Support - No issue
Old apps - May be, no experience of this.
Give me a IRL example. No theories, no what-ifs.
Install/Uninstall - Rediculussly easy
Just to name a few more: emerge, yum.
GUI based: synaptic, porthole.
And...why on earth is anybody using it in big or small environments? I'm thinking big companies now. If it is so darn hard to support and get documentations, why dont these corporations throw Linux out the WINDOWS?
To Anonymous
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Bakcground: I was an IT Consuntant for 15 years with a major international IT services firm, I now work independently. I use a Linux desktop for day-to-day work, the Windows machine is still there for certain tasks that require it, so I do use a lot of OOS software and I have done many major corporate development projects over the years.
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A little bit of fuding to be sure, but the report does have some basis in fact. Many projects lack good documentation. I was looking to set up a VPN on my firewall, so went to the documentation web site for the product. The whole section on VPN was just a bunch of screenshots with the text "to be written," not a single word on how to configure the VPN, no definition of what right side or left side IP Adresses are...
Support for older versions is also vitally important in a business environment. Look at MS's record for "dumping" old products only to get an uproar from customers and announcing another 6 months of extended support - and not even software that is that old, look at the Windows XP SP debacle last year...
I've worked with companies which still used DOS or OS/2 based software in a production environment because "it works," they don't need anything newer - as long as bugs and security issues are addressed. And forcing them to upgrade to a new version to fix a small bug, which requires newer hardware isn't a good way to keep your customers happy.
Open source does do a great job, and many of the projects are run professionalyl, but some still need to take these concerns onboard. Their products might be first class, but without first class support and documentation they won't get into business. The support issue can be provided by third parties, true, but they take on a big burden of responsibility if something goes wrong and the developers are unresponsive...
Good user and administration documentation is almost more important thant the product itself! For the projects I've worked on, we've always had to produce extensive and high quality documentation for the code and user and admin guides which are clear and in plain English before the client would sign off on the product.
As I said, some projects do provide some or all of this information and are run on a professional or semi-professional basis. Others concentrate on getting a running product out the door and because the project is run from almost a 100% technical side and the people writing the code know how to use it, things like documentation get forgotten. Downloading an accounting suite whose documentation consists of a not on which directory to shove it into and a list of bug fixes in the current release doesn't inspire confidence and probably won't gain as many customers (even if the code is superior) as one which comes with a couple of hundred pages of documentation on how to actually use and support the system!
Open Source is Not a Business Model.
I see a pattern. The pattern is a series of articles by both EWeek and ZD-Net to confuse Open Source as a development process and attempt to call it a business model.
It is not. Open Source is the Scientific Method applied to software development. The Scientific Method implies the formulation of hypothesis, the open demonstration of the principles of that hypothesis and the open and efficacious reproduction of said with validation.
The business model chosen to sell such software is not part of that definition. While there are avenues of efficiencies that enable more effective marketing and distribution Open Source is itself not a business model.
I really wish all these 'Open Source Experts' in the IT-Media would have the ability to comprehend that a quit this silly charade of attempting to confuse the public.
If that was the intent, it failed.
Open source projects are not the only ones who need more customer focus! I think Microsoft has no customer focus what ever but they were boy scouts compared to a company like SAS who make all their customers feel like criminals. I was never happier than the day I could drop their contract. If customers required Microsoft to guarantee a level of service with no virus, spyware, trojans or worms they would have no profit.