Free Software Adoption in the Enterprise

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Free Software Adoption in the Enterprise

• from use to community membership

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• open source has failed

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• open source has failed
• so far.

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• open source is now irrevocably equivalent with
  gratis or extremely cheap

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from LUGs to Rube Goldberg machines

• The abstract character of free software is
  changing
• The LUG fades
• Corporations dump leviathan codebases on the free
  software ecosystem
• Asymmetric business commitment to free software

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• ur doing it rong!

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business technology providers delivering
packages instead of sovereignty

• Open source businesses are happy to pass on the
  cost advantages but not the sovereignty
• They don't have to, but is that our message?
• Well maybe they don't want the extra revenue
  streams.
• Remind me, why was vendor lock-in bad? Oh, right,
  because it disenfranchised my company.

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business technology providers competing on price

• When the software is free as in beer, my cat
  could compete. Come on.
• A business model inspired by African cocoa
  farmers Hey, our product is superior! Let's
  sell it for next to nothing.
• Sell it dear. Give it a think coat of training.
  Jack up your support prices. Don't stop until the
  proprietary alternative looks cheap.
• Most IT projects flop. Often it's a buy-in and
  commitment problem. People commit more to
  Porsches than Ladas.

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• Let's lose the TCO war with proprietary vendors.
• If Microsoft becomes the cheaper alternative to
  free software, it should be considered a market
  correction in price/value points.

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business technology providers bait them with
open, switch them to proprietary

• Free business school lesson fraud is not a
  sustainable business model
• Oh, you wanted documentation and upgrade tools?
  We thought you might.
• A semi-free business model represents a failure
  to evolve. Let's look a little closer...

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business technology providers bait them with
open, switch them to proprietary

• revenue volume x profit per

Proprietary model can influence the per
client/sale/channel profitability at will
This is where free software business models will
attain sustainability
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the client enterprise using TCO, ROI, payback
period, etc.

• By focusing our message on cost, open source
  vendors have gotten into a pissing match. And
  they are up against some real talent.
• and as IT investment decision making aids are
  a crutch
• http//freshmeat.net/projects/common-sense/

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the client enterprise not going aggressively for
open source

• If your proprietary vendor isn't predatory, they
  are potentially predatory. But don't tell the
  investors, they hate risk.
• We can't all be Wal-Mart. Give us a product
  roadmap we can influence.
• Don't tell Josef Assad, but it really is
  cheaper.

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the client enterprise quit using, start
stakeholding

• Q What is a stakeholder, Clyde?
• A A stakeholder is a community member with a
  business card.
• (and don't call me Clyde.)?

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the client enterprise quit using, start
stakeholding

• Feed bug reports and fixes, feature requests and
  patches back to the community. Through the vendor
  if need be.
• Oh, so you want to talk ROI? Give us one fix and
  we'll give you ten.
• Confidentiality? Competitive advantage? No, those
  are in your data not your software.

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o hai community, ur doing it rong emphasising
breadth over depth

• 4 more years (of RTFM)! 4 more years (of STFW)!
• Just because some of RMS' principles are
  inconvenient doesn't mean they aren't relevant

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thank you VCs, for rewarding mimicry of
proprietary models

• VCs are funding the monetization of specific
  packages find a niche, dig yourself in
• Free software disrupts conventional software
  economics wisdom maybe the business models
  shouldn't be carbon copies of proprietary ones.

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so what's a venture capital fund to do?

• Freedom commoditizes software.
• A commodified market tends to sport many small
  participants. A free software Microsoft is
  unlikely.
• VCs need to scale down.
• Seek inspiration in microfinance if the banking
  industry can scale that far down then anyone can

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• so who is on to something?

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collaborative software initiative

• Shared platform
• Shared costs
• Crowdsourced domain-specific wisdom
• Come on, it abbreviates to CSI!

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north-by-south

• Network of Latin American free software
  developers
• Business-minded project managers on client site
• Linked directly in to the community.

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openlogic

• Remember that thing with scaling down?
• Support for 400 free software packages. With
  consolidated SLA.
• The moment we've all been waiting for commercial
  support for both vim and emacs from the same
  vendor (nano users should have known better)!

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notions to take away

• There's profit in scaling out and down
• Don't sell software, sell capability development
• Vendors make it expensive. Business clients
  like it like that
• O' gentle CIO you'll look funny if you miss the
  free software stampede
• Community quit it with the stampede

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• EOF