When Convincing Management to Open the Software?

Andrew writes "I work for a medium to large sized software company. I am working on a project to put one of our best products in the Open Source market. (It is a product that many people would love to see open sourced) I need help. I have to give a presentation to the Board to convince them that Open Source is the only way to suceed. Keep in mind that this is an established company that has been around for a long time. It will take a convincing, fact-filled argument to convince them. I am a believer that Open Source is the answer, but I am having a hard time finding concrete proof of this belief. I cannot convince them on theory alone."

Comments

The problems.

[Christopher Thomas]

The problem is that you have to provide a convincing argument that the company will make more money from the product if it is open-sourced than they would if it was closed-source.

This will be easier if:

• The product isn't doing well.
  If the product isn't pulling in much revenue, open sourcing it won't drop revenue by *that* much, and you may have a revitalized market for related products if the open sourced version of the product takes off.
  
  
• You are already making most of your money off of service contracts.
  If support is where most of the money is made from the product, then open sourcing the product means more demand for support and more revenue.
  
  
• You are making money off of hardware that the product runs on.
  If hardware is where most of the money is made from the product, then open sourcing the software will encourage more software to be produced for the platform, driving up demand for the hardware and revenue.
  

You have a hopeless task if:

• The money is made by selling the software, and it's selling well.
  Under these conditions, there is no benefit at all financially to making the product open source, as a very substantial revenue stream will vanish in a puff of smoke.
  

Any benefit provided by open sourcing has to outweigh the following automatic drawbacks:

• Loss of direct revenue from selling the software.
  You may be able to sell CDs, you may not, but whatever you do, you won't be able to charge hundreds or thousands of dollars per software license any more. Direct revenue drops like a stone.
  
  
• Giving free R&D benefits to the competition.
  Software does not exist in a vacuum. While your competitors could reverse-engineer how all of your features work by disassembly or by keen observation, it will be much easier if you hand out sample code for them. Your company will have to work a lot harder to maintain a technical advantage over its competition, and any such advantages will be short-lived. This worsens your product's position with respect to your competition and thus lowers your sales.
  

Also, in case you were planning to tout the benefits of opening up the Linux market, bear in mind that that market is still very small compared to the Windows market. Ditto BSD and MacOS X (though the MacOS X market isn't *that* small).

Both open source and free software are wonderful ideas, useful for a great many things - but they are not a magic wand that benefits everything. Your company might be substantially _harmed_ by switching over. Make sure of the benefits of your proposal before pitching.

What you should do...

[John Cats]

... is get all the suits into a meeting, then ramble on for a couple hours. They will not care, and they will asume your point was well proven even if they don't listen.

Talk about geeks, and passions, and free speech in the post columbine era. Carry on like open source is the only way to go. And compare the company to microsoft; making references that they would be evil for not releasing the software as open source.

Above all, ramble on forever and confuse them. Do not be afraid to contradict yourself.

Now go get 'em!!