July 14th, 2008
Enterprises still not getting full benefits of open source
We have been discussing this for weeks here, but now there’s confirmation from Forrester Research.
Enterprises are not getting the full benefits of open source. (I found this picture of Shrek in The Matrix at a South African blog owned by Devlin Schoonraad and just could not resist.)
Those enterprises which do use open source often treat it as free, as in free beer. They grab the code and build an internal support team around it.
Others treat it as a direct competitor with enterprise software, taking both the code and support from the project leader, just as they might buy a license from a vendor.
Many are looking for support, and are concerned about lack of support, but I wonder sometimes what they mean by support. The support of a schmoozing salesman? The support of an operator standing by? The support of buzzwords supporting your “marketing” decision?
Surely they can’t mean there aren’t enough support organizations or support staffs behind open source projects. Don’t they know the number of their IBM rep?
The real problem, it seems to me, is they don’t understand the nature of support in an open source world. It’s a mutual process, a matrix, combining your own efforts, those of vendors, and those of communities which may include competitors.
The way you access that support is by giving support. You access that support by donating code, by offering support for your own innovations, and by helping other users with problems, without asking where those users work.
This is where, for many enterprises, the open source value system starts to look like communism. The best way to get support is to give support, so you’ll know where the real expertise lies out there in the world, and how to access it.
Having a single open source champion within the organization won’t get it done. You need to empower that champion with the authority to train everyone else on this ethos, to grow your own support matrix and link it with others.
This is, indeed, a major cultural shift for companies which see computing as both a cost and a strategic advantage. But that is how you gain the full benefits of open source.
Mix it up, as in the picture.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 07/14/08
