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Open Source does not win by being cheaper

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Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#51

Post by Qwertious »

maltalex wrote: post #37
musicale wrote: post #28

> For some, this might be a tough pill to swallow. But a for-profit business exists for profit. No, a business usually exists to provide some useful good or service to its customers. FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes phones and computers. Etc. > Definitionally and practically. Profit is what allows the company to hire employees, grow, and sustain itself—it is quite literally what funds ongoing development That's g…

> No, a business usually exists to provide some useful good or service to its customers. FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes phones and computers. Etc. What? If Apple or FedEx could get customers to (sustainably) pay them without actually providing a product in return, do you think they would have kept making phones and delivering packages just for the hell of it?

Hah, "if" - as if every company isn't actively pursuing recurring revenue models right now.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#52

Post by debarshri »

jandrese wrote: post #3

I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…

I am engineer, now trying to sell enterprise software. May be I can shed some light.

If a company says it is not their current focus even after paying 200k, you should looking into finding an alternative vendor who is willing to go above and beyond. A good vendor gets you by features and keeps you with exceptional service. I have seen vendors saying that those words when they are in extraction mode.

In my opinion orgs should have service contract. It is more important when you are responding to RFP and you are a b2b org. If you dont have a service contract for tools and service you use, you will run into liabilities that you don't own and can delegate it to the vendor.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#53

Post by eep_social »

jcrben wrote: post #27
GeneralMayhem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Component breaks due to bug, deployment misconfiguration, scaling failure, etc., and your company loses $1M during the outage. If it's a vendor with an SLA, you can (sometimes) get them to cover the $1M. If it's in-house, you're eating it. It's often cheaper to build/run stuff yourself (unless it's so commodified that you're benefiting from amortization across the vendor's many clients), but then you have to be self-…

I don't think liability payments are that common. As someone who helps in analyzing software purchase decisions, it's certainly not something I hear people bring as a major factor.

Maybe size of enterprise matters? I work in $LargeCorp and legal was very aggressive about insurance and liability redlines on the last contract I had to deal with.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#54

Post by mholt »

mindwok wrote: post #30
mholt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Caddy project is fighting to show it can work. We are having moderate success. I just gave a talk about this a couple weeks ago at an internal company event and will be doing so again at GoWest in a few weeks. The premise is that open source licenses are what they are: they grant freedom, but not other things that companies would pay money for. Proprietary licenses do offer what companies need, but at the cost of…

I love Caddy and have shilled to everyone I know, so thanks for your great work. I'm keen to hear more about your model, because I think the influx of companies abandoning their open source roots has shown the problems with the current approach. I am rooting for you folks!

Thank you!! Appreciate that encouragement.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#55

Post by toomuchtodo »

pylua wrote: post #41
hinkley wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Vendor contracts are hard - So we avoid doing them - So we never get good at them - So every contract is a painful lesson in trying Open source wins because I don't have to involve the entire company to use it. I can literally just raise my voice to see if anyone in the group cares and then use it. And even when it's free for small companies, not approving a license is holding up something that we think is already…

In many companies I expect at least a security review of the open source before developers can use it. This can have a lot of red tape.

This is why a SaaS offering is a must. For open source, a security review might be needed. For a SaaS, checkbox SOC2 and we’re on our way. Leverage to reduce the B2B sales cycle as you scale.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#57

Post by MilStdJunkie »

pylua wrote: post #41
hinkley wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Vendor contracts are hard - So we avoid doing them - So we never get good at them - So every contract is a painful lesson in trying Open source wins because I don't have to involve the entire company to use it. I can literally just raise my voice to see if anyone in the group cares and then use it. And even when it's free for small companies, not approving a license is holding up something that we think is already…

In many companies I expect at least a security review of the open source before developers can use it. This can have a lot of red tape.

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. This can stop adoption right in its tracks, and it depends entirely on one or two personalities. Who's at the wheel in office InfoSec. One guy had a strict "Open Source is Inherently Unstable" red line, sooooooooo . . well, we went two levels above him to get OSS signed off on, because the parent org was all about OSS. Doing that was a bad career decision, but it was the right one. This article gets it right almost exactly; transparency was a huge part of adoption, but the extensibility thing is also a big deal for a niche industry. Also, our vendor was unspeakable, disappearing for years on end, re-appearing as another company, asking fifty times the money for no reason.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#58

Post by 000ooo000 »

musicale wrote: post #28

> For some, this might be a tough pill to swallow. But a for-profit business exists for profit. No, a business usually exists to provide some useful good or service to its customers. FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes phones and computers. Etc. > Definitionally and practically. Profit is what allows the company to hire employees, grow, and sustain itself—it is quite literally what funds ongoing development That's g…

>No, a business usually exists to provide some useful good or service to its customers. FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes phones and computers. Etc.

You would have to be grossly naive to think mission comes before profit for 99% of companies.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#59

Post by musicale »

Qwertious wrote: post #51
maltalex wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, a business usually exists to provide some useful good or service to its customers. FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes phones and computers. Etc. What? If Apple or FedEx could get customers to (sustainably) pay them without actually providing a product in return, do you think they would have kept making phones and delivering packages just for the hell of it?

Hah, "if" - as if every company isn't actively pursuing recurring revenue models right now.

In theory you can cancel a subscription if you don't think it's providing any value.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#60

Post by yoyohello13 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #4
jandrese wrote: post #3

I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…

If you hire an engineer, the liability is your problem. If you donate to open source, liability is still your problem. Both of these situations are patently unpalatable for most businesses. Meanwhile, if you pay someone for a support contract the liability is their problem. You see, whether a problem that comes up is fixed is actually irrelevant. The real question is how much liability you can get rid of.

Whatever anyone else is saying this is the real reason. I’ve seen it first hand many time. The only thing that matters is being able to blame somebody else when problems arise.
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