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Open Source Software Serves Niche Markets
mahendra writes "News.com is carrying an article about localisation of OpenOffice.org.
'So, what's new about that?', you may ask. The article talks about the potential markets that proprietary software markets are ignoring. By the time they realize the potential, Open Source software will have made deep inroads into these markets..."
So how big is the size of these niche markets? Maybe mainstream companies aren't interested in them in the first place.
And when these niche markets become mainstream, I am sure big companies like MS can easily enter these markets either by buying out or squeezing out.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Everything is a "niche market." The trick is covering as many niches as you can. That's why MS Office is so successful. Ubiquitous word processor of marginal quality? Check. Crappy relational database software? Check. Slide-show software with gazillions of incredibly annoying backgrounds and clip-arts? Check.
Open Office, if it is to succeed MS Office, must be of better quality. Makign inroads into niche markets is fine, but if Linux zealots are the only people your making inroads to, it doesn't really help much.
As for my niche, I'll use emacs, thanks.
I have discovered a truly marvelous
Alternate solutions have always filled niche markets. The only real special part of it today, as I have seen, is that Open Source offers a free or readily customizable solution to what used to be an expensive problem to deal with.
Mainstream software providers aren't generally interested in true niche markets. Growth isn't predictable and that doesn't look good to shareholders. Instead they concentrate on the masses, where their solution will work for a large enough population to make profit without having to work harder. It's simply better sense for them if they're market-driven rather than based around a central individual money-source.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
As we know, Microsoft applications are consistantly attacked because of its large market share and the damaging effect that the security holes in it have. The thing about those, is that people have to figure out inventive ways to do it. Now, with open source, there is a community that creates it, and the open source community generally supports it well. If open source is more mainstream, will there be worry that due to the availability of the source code, people can make even more painful security exploits?
A small team of developers in Rwanda was just beginning work on a project to produce a localized version of OpenOffice....
:)
This is why linux has flourished with developers. It was by developers for developers. This is nothing new, we know the difference, and are willing to make it work to suit our needs.
Scientists seem to feel OK with Linux, *NIX, and open-source software as well.
Its that damned 99% of the rest of the population that we have problems with
RTFA, and this sounds like the classic investor-targeted article explaining why product x has an advantage because it targets the under-targeted market y.
You do have to think about how much of a profit market there can exist for computers in a place where the local language has no word for computer. There is a reason MS is not bothering to make inroads in Rwanda. It's about making money, so MS is just as evil in this particular case as almost any other business on earth. We could apply this case to any number of products, software or otherwise. "Volunteers build houses in Rwanda, international contractors ignore upcoming market".
Still, this highlights a difference between open and closed source. Open source needs a community, not a company. That community actively shares and extends itself.
"Computer technology is seen as at least one possible route to lead the country out of poverty..."
We can debate that all day. Needless to say, industrialization happened in most countries before computers. I would love to have computers without industrialization's problems, but that doesn't seem to be a reality.
"It's one of those areas where proprietary software companies are fundamentally at a disadvantage because of their method of allocating resources..."
They are disadvantaged because there is no money there. Open source doesn't use money, it uses people (volunteers). So money is the not the goal, hence money is not the deciding factor. We should not need analysts to communicate this.
Or in other words, Open Source software would have made deep inroads into these markets if /. HADN'T GIVEN THEM A BIG FAT WARNING!
Sheesh, are we tring to give MS business model advice?
</humor>
SCO.com uses Linux
Disclaimer: I work on OpenOffice.org OS X
The OpenOffice.org localization argument for serving niche markets has been around for a long time. A prime example of that is the Hebrew Office v. X incident. For me personally, however, I see OSS as a great way to provide competition in non-profitable markets such as office suites.
It's near impossible to try to form a cogent business plan around making office productivity software given the current state of the market. Microsoft has office suite dominance almost as large as Windows market share, and may even be more. Most every company has created some type of workflow based on Office and has legacy documents in Office formats that may stretch back for decades. With the advent of Visual Basic for Applications and Access, companies have also been writing custom business applications coded to work only with Office.
It's difficult to convince investors to pour money into a startup where you're competing directly against Microsoft, especially in a market where they've got the upper hand, established customer lock-in, and decades of software development. As an investor it's almost a sure bet that any money dumped in such a startup would be lost. It's near impossible to create a viable long-term self sustaining business with Microsoft as your competitor in a market they've already monopolized.
Open source software doesn't need to abide by the standard rules of business. It doesn't need to create a revenue stream and find investors. It doesn't need to worry about being underpriced by market dumping practices. As long as there are starving (or subsidized) programmers willing to work on it and eager users, OSS can produce competition in a market where convential businesses would most likely fail. This is one of OSS's greatest strengths.
Competition is at the core of evolution and innovation. It's comforting to know that OSS keeps open these avenues for competition when traditional capitalism fails. Hopefully this will help motivate both the OSS alternatives and Office to continue to improve and evolve.
ed
You and me both. But, it looks like dentists have already won their battle for free software. Of course, I can't comment on how good it is ....
So where do I sign up to convince people to write POS Software for me?
...like this? Doesn't look like free-as-in-speech but it's only $200 so I'd say it qualifies as "cheap". This outfit is pretty local (to me anyways) and has been offering a POS system of some kind on Linux for a few years now.
As for OPEN SOURCE...POS seems to be an area lacking in a high profile solution (where OS has Linux and BSD, WWW has Apache, DBMS has MySQL and PostgreSQL). There is one aspect of a POS system where you may run into legal barriers in releasing source code and that is direct interfacing with credit/debit card systems (POSpad hardware, Datapac networks and so on).
You can legally reverse engineer the comms but in order to use the system on a live network it needs to be approved by the financial institution. To be approved requires you to obtain the specs and sample user-acceptance-test scripts prior to development. To obtain (ie. **BORROW** since you must return these on demand and cannot copy them without permission) these materials you must sign an NDA which could possibly close up a portion of your system's code (you'd have to make it modular and do the NVidia-type idea).
Once development is complete you must perform the U.A.T. under the bank's supervision, and if you score 100% you are granted access to the real system with a proper merchant ID and Terminal ID(s) set up on their mainframes to work with the MAC ID's burned into the firmware of your POSPads and modems.
Not a very hack-friendly system. Of course, the NDA may allow the software to be open-source, but if anyone so much as changes one byte and recompiles (such that the checksum of the binary files differ) that party must sign the same NDA and do the entire U.A.T. AGAIN.
Sooooo....cheap/free/Free POS is a good idea, but integrated credit or debit support would be a PITA (FYI = Pain In The A$$). Perhaps a bank has a gateway interface for CC auth that is open source but I'm not aware of it. That is definitely not the case when interfacing with retail POSpads that I'm aware of.
"Open Office, if it is to succeed MS Office, must be of better quality."
No it doesn't. Not at all. The only thing it must be is good enough and cheaper. That's all it takes.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Maybe a Rwandan user would be better off learning English. Until he does, he'll get used to whatever works in Rwandan, which is OO right now. When his English proficiency is up, is he going to say, "Oh boy, now I know English, so I can switch to MSoffice"? Or is he going to say, "Why should I switch when I know OO and it works fine?"
If you know esperanto, why not volunteer to do it?
If your area becomes less isolated from the world, you'll start exchanging documents with the other Microsoft-infested areas, you'll need common format. If your software can't read theirs, you'll need to make a switch because people will start sending you their documents in MS formats, and you won't be able to just ignore it.
This is how they were forcing others to upgrade their Office instalations to the latest version.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov