Re: XOpus

Am 21.11.2002 16:23 Uhr +0000 uebermittelte Alex McLintock folgende Zeilen:
>Oh dear. It looks like XOpus isn't going to be open source, after all.
>
>http://xopus.org/index.jsp
>
>Hmmmm. I can't really argue with their reasoning. I am pushing Open 
>Source to the business community - and not getting enough revenue to 
>make it worthwhile either.
>
>Comments?

Hi Alex, hi list,

a sad story takes it's turn... :-(

However, I quite understand q42's reasons (see below), from an open 
source perspective: what a pitty! It's really sad, that an 
interesting project (editing XML in WYIWYG) like XOpus, driven with a 
lot of enthusiasm and altruism comes to a sudden stop after such 
short time. However, there is still hope, that one day, editing XML 
in your browser will no longer be a Microsoft and Altnova (or which 
company will come up with solutions to do that) thing.

On the other hand, from a business perspective I understand the guys 
completely! They jumped in a new market (providing an application for 
free and hoping to get some project budgets out of it) and realised, 
that it won't work out. Therefore, it's better to pull the plug, than 
to ruin the company. For me that's ok, and understandable. Some might 
say, that maybe they should have been a bit more patient, maybe their 
business case wasn't that well-thought, maybe, maybe, maybe. However, 
it is like it is and we have to respect q42's entrepreneurial 
decission.

 From my experience it's not an easy job, to support the use of open 
source software in a company or in a project, either on a consultant, 
managerial or on development level. And I know, it's even harder, to 
come up with an idea like, let's make a donnation to the project 
"xyz", because if we had not had the ability to use their piece "abc" 
we would have to spend quite some dollars to company xyz to write 
something... So, reality shows us, that even, if you get clear 
advantages in financial and functional regards, almost no firm wants 
to fund open source projects in any way. How many web-whatever-firms 
are using LAMP to develop their applications? How many of them are 
actively supporting the processes behind LAMP? They are using LAMP to 
generate their rervenue and what's the payback? On the other hand, if 
they have to implement Oracle-DB or whatever, they are quite willing 
to pay a hefty amount just get into "developer" status...

And then, from my personal point of view, I think it's really 
difficult, if a small company tries do do two things: support and 
develop an open source software and to realize projects for clients. 
As far as I know, it worked out quite well for zope (maybe because 
they really happen to be early on the market), but others I know of, 
are or where struggling with the dualism. Maybe you can handle the 
dualism better, if the Company is bigger than just a handful of 
programmers or if the roles are more clearly separated (ex. a little 
open source group whitin the company) . However such an engagement 
always consumes a lot of ressources which have to be available and 
assigned. Not an easy task...

And at last, think of this: selling a solution based on Microsoft 
always gets you 20% (YMMV) a pop directly in your pocket. And the 
client, buying Microsoft also knows what he gets, because it's still 
true, that you can't judge wrong to buy a product from a big 
player... And - I just heard this as an rumor - some clients still 
think, they can sue Microsoft if the product doesn't work properly. 
;-)

(aem, you can exchange Microsoft with other big brand names, if you like ...)

So, what we've got till here? The insight, that supporting open 
source isn't an easy thing, and if you are trying to build your 
business case on open source you should better think twice and do it 
right, because, there are opportunities to succeed with open source 
software (maybe you just get paid a bit less than working at PwC or 
something like that...)

--mv

>Alex
>
>
>
>
>
>Openweb Analysts Ltd, London.
>Software For Complex Websites http://www.OWAL.co.uk/
>Open Source Software Companies please register here 
>http://www.OWAL.co.uk/oss_support/
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WyonaCMS-users mailing list
>[email protected]
>http://mail.wyona.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wyonacms-users


-- 
**************************************

Unglaublich, aber wahr: Dilbert lebt!

**************************************