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Annie Weinberger's BlogOpen Source is Free like a Free Puppy is Free
November 19, 2008 @ 2:34 pm by Annie Weinberger
We look differently at the cardboard box full of free puppies outside the super market once we become adults. As children what could be more fun than to get a puppy who is going to be your friend for life? Why not mom…it’s FREE!! But as adults we have learned the truth. We know that taking home that puppy is going to cost us in the end. The free price tag hides all the costs we are going to spend on food, training, shots, and a new couch once the puppy discovers you are not coming home at 5:00 every night to walk him. Open source WCM solutions are very similar. The free price tag is attractive at first, but for online strategies that have multiple initiatives (intranet, extranet, portal, landing pages, micro-sites, etc.), the hidden fees lie in the heavy customization, maintenance and engineering work. Instead of building out basic functionality, WCM developers can focus on enhancing the Web experience by providing templates and components that allow their interactive marketers to easily contribute rich media, metadata, and targeted content to increase conversions and provide relevant experiences to drive business growth. The lack of this functionality can lead to lost revenue. For most companies, this outweighs the initial price tag and they turn to a proven, out-of-the-box solution that will support all their online initiatives. And more likely than not, the kid who so loved the free price tag isn’t going to stay around to make sure the puppy is walked, trained, fed, and doesn’t turn your shoes into a chew toy.
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“…online strategies that have multiple initiatives (intranet, extranet, portal, landing pages, micro-sites, etc.), the hidden fees lie in the heavy customization, maintenance and engineering work.”
Annie, you’re realize these very same costs of implementation also exist in the proprietary software systems that aren’t Open Source.
A better analogy is Open Source is like a puppy you get out of the pound, while proprietary systems are puppies you get out a puppy mill.
You gotta walk ‘em, you gotta bath them, but if you’re into pedigrees… you probably run Windows.
The point of open source is free as in speech, not free as in beer. Like when the “proven, out-of-the-box solution” lacks a feature you need or has a bug that breaks things… and there’s nothing the user can do about it.
LeeHunter on Dries Buytaert’s blog wrote:
“As a dog owner myself, I’m partial to the puppy analogy. But if someone is going to use it, they should remember that the expensive “purebred” will have a greater chance of genetic problems caused by excessive inbreeding whereas the mutt with genetic material from all over the place, is probably going to be more robust, more even tempered, with a longer lifespan and fewer trips to the vet.”
M$ is used to say such a things a few years ago.
I customise OS solutions for my clients – they love that they are so tweakable, and they only have to pay for my company’s time to adjust, design and populate them…
Annie, the whole “open source isn’t free!” argument is old. Very, very old. It’s already been hashed out to death by sysadmins versus IT management, as those sysadmins were busily deploying Linux and FreeBSD web, mail and database servers.
As was pointed out then, when the open source crowd says “free”, they aren’t talking about the price. They’re talking about the liberty open source gives you. You don’t like the way something works? Change it. Need to extend/enhance the product? No problem, you have the blueprints in front of you. If you aren’t technical enough to read them, that’s OK too – there are hundreds or possibly thousands of other people that can and are willing to do the work for you.
The problem with closed-source solutions is that unless there is an extensive, well-maintained and well-documented API, you are immediately tied to the vendor for any and all support. If you’ve got a great vendor, then it’s not so bad … but if not, you can be in for a world of hurt.
Just ask sysadmins who have switched from proprietary to open platforms – they’ve already been down this road and most of them are pretty happy with their “free” solutions.
having a clear idea of what you want to achieve in terms of the requirements helps in deciding which solution will fit the bill, however in the real world this is never the case!
choosing open source can give you free access to the code base (or for a very small fee) before you start coding – this can help in making a decision for the long term future of the application.
then there is the case of hiring developers in-house or external agencies, naturally the latter will incur huge costs and you will tied into maintainence contracts.
Before taking a puppy you will look at it, and decide if you like this puppy or not and if you’d like to take it with you or not.
The same way is with open source products. Before adopting it and decide if you would like to use it you will test it, play around and find if it suits you or not, if you ready to pay for additional features or not.
Won’t you buy a sweet bone for your puppy? Will you leave it alone? If you really like it you will not do it. (the same with open source)
Interesting, however I am not sure you made your point. No matter “which” animal you get free or for fee you always have “ongoing costs”, but you do remove the initial costs. I believe that is the appeal of the free approach, removing the initial costs (Software), Interwoven should consider having both maybe merging with the like of Alfresco
-Talon Wolfhound
As a digital agency I employ real developers. Thats why I love OS solutions. A bug in the software? Easy, get one of our devs to patch it and submit it back to the project. Makes our project better, and makes the OS project better too!
Cant do that with proprietary software!
Great discussion guys and good feedback. My intention with the puppy blog (as it has become known) was not to slam open source in anyway. We actually use open source technology on our website and in our products. My point was that WCM has evolved enormously and what was CMS 10 years ago, is now really Web Content Optimization and comparing that to open source is like comparing puppies and kittens (to continue the theme).
All the open source developers who commented on this blog are absolutely correct that the Webmaster bottle neck problem, versioning, workflow, and templating can be addressed very well by open source. However, WCM is no longer just for IT or just about managing content, it’s about helping the business meet their top line revenue goals.
For global 2000 enterprises, marketers and business folks are trying to figure out how they are going to increase their SEO, how they are going to cross-sell and retain their customers, how they are going to quickly rollout landing pages for marketing campaigns, and how they are going to increase conversion rates through multivariable testing and targeting to anonymous site visitors. And IT is looking to respond to those requirements with enterprise scale offerings that can be molded to suit the specific requirements of the online marketer.
Love that this topic is so popular, keep the comments coming!
Yes, these are some of my enterprise requirements:
1) cross-sell and retain their customers
2) quickly rollout landing pages for marketing campaigns
3) increase conversion rates through multivariable testing and targeting to anonymous site visitors
Let’s add
ability for business users to do all of the above without IS intervention
4) multisite capability
5) subscription management
6) triggered alerts and notifications
7) dynamically configurable SEO (on-page and off-page factors)
I’m not convinced that proprietary tools do this better than open source tools, or vice-versa.
What I’d really like to see is business cases that show why proprietary tools (or open source tools) deliver this better/faster/cheaper in each of these cases. Or how to judge what is right for you?
That part is a bit murky to me.