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Leveraging Linux when Hardware is a Commodity?
AKInnovation asks: "My company produces peripheral hardware used in commercial applications, such as retail POS. In our market, amongst other such hardware manufacturers, we are the only ones to offer Linux software solutions (drivers). This distinction has recently won us several large accounts. When the hardware becomes a commodity, and you must compete on the software side to keep the money coming in, how can releasing your code as Open Source be rationalized to management?"
It is my opinion that the future of Open Source is "General-purpose codebase re-applied to Custom Computing Scenario".
how can releasing your code as Open Source be rationalized to management?
1. Release your code.
2. Manage your contributing developer community. (Sourceforge)
3. Grow the codebase by doing #2 well.
4. Establish good working relationships with customers, customize the codebase for them. (Customers == people who want customized work.)
5. Add a services department that does #4, and only #4, when you've got #2 under control.
OSS is the grand unifier which sets the standards - pretty high - for everyone. The way you differentiate is by really identifying the needs of your customers and then using the OSS machine to deliver on those needs
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Yep, Microsoft is really unable to make a living out of Windows and Office.... Get real.
But he's true. Microsoft would have a hard time selling commodities like O/S + bundled software, Office etc. if we were to start from scratch, without the huge momentum and inertia involved in the 10 years of monopolist tradition of using vendor-locking MS products. There are few competitors in commercial desktop O/S + Office department not only because MS is practicing tough monopolism but also because the market has stagnated, saturated. When was the last time you waited for the next version of your favorite word processor, like in the 80's/90's? Now people implement O/S's and office suites in their spare time and they make it open source.
Do you remember when Netscape was selling their browser? I guess they made a few dimes during the first years but nobody does make money off web browsers anymore, not even from companies. Same goes for making web pages: only a little money is paid for writing HTML, unlike in the late 90's. Web and HTML are commodities. These days companies buy meta software like a CMS instead of web pages. They buy customized software solutions instead of retail products. They don't buy Apache or IIS (if both were on sale as separate products) but a web application framework and custom development on that.
OSS fits the scheme perfectly, where companies only want to pay for their part and get standard software on the basis of their solution. CSS fits in less perfectly but it's still drifting towards the same situation, anyway.
If your only edge is the POS software, then don't release it as open-source. That would ruin your company, and I thought that was pretty obvious. The only time it would make sense to make software for a POS thing open-source is if the SOFTWARE is a commodity (Linux is an example of this, except with operating systems). Otherwise, it would simply give your competitors a boost.
Of course, if your customers want access to the source, then you can give it to them under a restrictive license (so they still have to buy your hardware). But you don't want to lose your competitive edge.