| > Did you just casually imply Office and Windows don't have problems? No, I think you misread or I wasn't clear. Microsoft (and other companies) support service contracts exist purely because of inadequacies in the software. Microsoft wins twice because they sell the software and sell/certify the service organizations. > Technically, yes. But has that ever happened? If you open source your 5 million line code base, you still have the expertise, not some outsider. Yes. Why do you think your employees will stay with your company forever? All a competitor has to do is put out a job req "looking for expert in foo, will pay top $$$" and hire away your expert staff. This does happen and it often happens because purchasing organizations prefer to "separate interests" between vendors and service companies hoping that it forces vendors to build better software that require fewer services. This creates a market for service competitors, and if they're willing to make smaller margins, can pay your people, the people you have in your company doing service work more. For example, how many people who don't work for Red Hat offer Red Hat support services? > The valid business strategy is nobody will trust you if you aren't open source these days. I don't really disagree. Which is why you need to have a strategy that lets you check the "is open source" box with a buyer, while still protecting your business advantage. |
Oh, I've no idea. I'd only go to RedHat for "official" RedHat support?
Another intersecting approach is something like Postgres or MySQL. The ownership of the code is irrelevant at this point and we just have independent consultancies (or integrators) providing expert-level services. But, that's almost a complete inversion of the original premise here of open sourcing your own product while retaining product control + revenue from control of said product. (which sounds like what you're afraid of most general "we open sourced our product" situations devolving into.)
In general, I've seen little interest from random Internet companies in providing support for private open sourced software. Nobody wants to spend months/years understanding your software to compete against your knowledge/expertise (unless you get really successful, but that's a whole other game).