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Open Sourcing a Vertical Market Application?

Posted by Cliff on from the open-source-in-a-high-rise-nich dept.

BigCanOfTuna asks: "The company I work for is considering the possibility of turning over one of thier enterprise applications to the open source community. They are doing this for a number of reasons including raising thier profile in the OS community, developing relationships with other Energy companies that would be willing to hire us as consultants, and of course just for good will (if there is such a thing in business!). Since the application is very specific to a vertical market, can one expect to see the same results that other open source projects see? Are there any other successful OS projects out there that are geared to a specific niche?"

2 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I predict two things: by jrstewart · · Score: 3, Insightful
    2) Assuming the program is internal to the company, it will not be distributed - therefore there is no need to share code changes back with you and the community at large.

    So it's likely you will have some users, but few contributers.

    Legal obligation is only part of the reason to contribute to an open source program. Another huge one is not having to maintain your own set of patches against the main app. Then there's the idea of community - if you share you'll cool features hopefully other people will too. These are sound arguments that businessmen understand. They all lower your local development costs.
  2. An Argument for OSS. by jfisherwa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You make some good arguments, but you're looking at it from the wrong angle.

    His product will not directly benefit other businesses. It will, however, benefit contractors that implement OSS applications within these businesses.

    I'm in a similiar position. I have two decently sized applications that I developed and licensed out - there is only one client per each. I would like to see them developed more, and hope someone could use them--perhaps I may be able to make a few bucks down the road as consulting for this.

    In reality, I am not really missing out on any income as the chances of someone picking this up and going after a client that I even know exists are pretty slim. I will, however, gain a better understanding of the application itself, maybe make a few acquaintances and hopefully pay back the community that has helped me in so many ways already.

    Isn't that what it's all about?

    Jason