When Convincing Management to Open the Software?

Andrew writes "I work for a medium to large sized software company. I am working on a project to put one of our best products in the Open Source market. (It is a product that many people would love to see open sourced) I need help. I have to give a presentation to the Board to convince them that Open Source is the only way to suceed. Keep in mind that this is an established company that has been around for a long time. It will take a convincing, fact-filled argument to convince them. I am a believer that Open Source is the answer, but I am having a hard time finding concrete proof of this belief. I cannot convince them on theory alone."

What you should do....

[titus-g]

When Convincing Management to Open the Software

Is stand well back so the semtex charges you put in the box earlier don't get you as well.

Some ideas...

[csmacd]

Making money involves providing something. Service is an obvious choice; documentation and training would be others.

What about additional tools/utilities/functions that could be added to the open source product? Could a "Professional" version be an upgrade? Or could this product be open-sourced as a means of advertisement for other products?

Another success story

[webmaven]

You might want to check out Zope [zope.org]. Digital Creations took a moderately successful commercial product, and turned it into a category killer by open sourcing it. Here [zope.org] is their account of how the decision was reached, and here [digicool.com] is a presentation.
--

#include

[Mignon]

I would consider inviting ESR to give the talk, as he has been giving this talk for years now.

Good question

[GMontag]

The 2 big points that I would make are:

1. Bugs can be found and fixed by a large base of people, however, the company does need to make a serious effort to find the bugs first.

This will result in a large number of knowledgable people that will be referring your product to others as something good/safe to use. You should still be able to sell plenty of product, if you want to, because most folks that a re "just users" prefer a package and some sort of company backing, as well as easier install, etc.

2. Gratuituotous (hell, I can't spell stuff like that) reason: Open Source is a hot buzzword now, but show them that even if the source is open, joe-schmoe user is not interested in compiling for his own machine, so that takes you back to #1 above, you will still sell plenty of product even if it is OS.

Conclusion should be something to the effect of getting lots of community support and assistance that you would not normally have, as well as being able to sell plenty of product.

Give examples of hardware/software that is commercially packaged even though it is available free: Cobolt machines, Linud distros, *BSD, etc.

Sorry if it was not more in depth, I recently picked up a similar dilemma at work and this is all I have come up with sofar.

Visit DC2600 [dc2600.com]

Some case studies.

[barracg8]

Okay, consider this a discussion document and feel free to tell me I'm wrong :-)

Two main case studies spring to mind of people Freeing up previously comercial products.

Netscape Navigator

• Motivation:
  • Crisis. Hands were forced (by micros~1 giving away IE) to make it free, so may as well make it Free. Hoping for free labour?
  What went wrong:
  • The product was a mess - It needed a complete rewrite. It was less like a commercial product being opensourced, more like the start of a new opensource project. Mozilla was not a product in use by people, so people didn't have an itch to scratch in the code. Most geeks were quite happy with how Navigator performed, anyway.
  How did they correct this:
  • Simple. Hard work. They have re-written the browser with little external support (although, respect to those who did help them).
  Sucess?
  • Yes. { I guess this one will be a little contraversial } Given AOL's position (their dependance on Microsoft), buying out Netscape was always going to be a smart move. This would probably have happened whatever. The lack of support means that
  • opensourcing Naviagator probably wouldn't have helped save the company. Once the browser was opensource, the opensource community would probably not have let it die - but AOL couldn't rely on that fact.

    But the future looks promising. It will probably become the standard browser every where but Windows & MacOS, and may well make inroads there. And in this I am including a big embedded (eg WebTV) market. Once There is an actual code base out there, and people are using the software, people are more likely to contribute.

  $$$$$
  • I don't need to say where AOL gets it's money :-)

StarOffice

• Motivation:
  1. Make money out of support.
  2. Win friends in the opensource community, while at the same time withdrawing from submitting Java to standards processes :-(
  3. Get an office on Solaris as strong as M$ Office.
  4. Piss Bill Gates off.
  What went wrong:
  • It was free, but it wasn't Free. Corparations are finding out that the opensource community are not just a bunch of freeloaders who do not want to play for their software, but that
  • freedom actually means something to us. Sun released the source - the opensource community turned up their noses, said "no, that isn't Free", and carried on developing the office suites for KDE & Gnome.
  How did they correct this:
  • Three letters: GPL.
  Sucess?
  • Not yet.
  • 
    But As Sun accept Gnome as the next window manager for Solaris, any help for Gnome Office is support for Sun workstations. UNIX, not just Linux, will probably end up with a strong office suite out of this, and that helps Sun make money out of hardware.
  $$$$$
  • Not yet.
  • 
    I'm sure that Sun would like to make money out of support, but like I say, they really make their money elsewhere.

Good luck

G

The problems.

[Christopher Thomas]

The problem is that you have to provide a convincing argument that the company will make more money from the product if it is open-sourced than they would if it was closed-source.

This will be easier if:

• The product isn't doing well.
  If the product isn't pulling in much revenue, open sourcing it won't drop revenue by *that* much, and you may have a revitalized market for related products if the open sourced version of the product takes off.
  
  
• You are already making most of your money off of service contracts.
  If support is where most of the money is made from the product, then open sourcing the product means more demand for support and more revenue.
  
  
• You are making money off of hardware that the product runs on.
  If hardware is where most of the money is made from the product, then open sourcing the software will encourage more software to be produced for the platform, driving up demand for the hardware and revenue.
  

You have a hopeless task if:

• The money is made by selling the software, and it's selling well.
  Under these conditions, there is no benefit at all financially to making the product open source, as a very substantial revenue stream will vanish in a puff of smoke.
  

Any benefit provided by open sourcing has to outweigh the following automatic drawbacks:

• Loss of direct revenue from selling the software.
  You may be able to sell CDs, you may not, but whatever you do, you won't be able to charge hundreds or thousands of dollars per software license any more. Direct revenue drops like a stone.
  
  
• Giving free R&D benefits to the competition.
  Software does not exist in a vacuum. While your competitors could reverse-engineer how all of your features work by disassembly or by keen observation, it will be much easier if you hand out sample code for them. Your company will have to work a lot harder to maintain a technical advantage over its competition, and any such advantages will be short-lived. This worsens your product's position with respect to your competition and thus lowers your sales.
  

Also, in case you were planning to tout the benefits of opening up the Linux market, bear in mind that that market is still very small compared to the Windows market. Ditto BSD and MacOS X (though the MacOS X market isn't *that* small).

Both open source and free software are wonderful ideas, useful for a great many things - but they are not a magic wand that benefits everything. Your company might be substantially _harmed_ by switching over. Make sure of the benefits of your proposal before pitching.

What you should do...

[John Cats]

... is get all the suits into a meeting, then ramble on for a couple hours. They will not care, and they will asume your point was well proven even if they don't listen.

Talk about geeks, and passions, and free speech in the post columbine era. Carry on like open source is the only way to go. And compare the company to microsoft; making references that they would be evil for not releasing the software as open source.

Above all, ramble on forever and confuse them. Do not be afraid to contradict yourself.

Now go get 'em!!