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Open Source Services Come of Age
Rob writes "A new breed of solutions and services companies is bringing a more professional
approach to the deployment of open source software. A sure sign of a maturing market is
when vendors stop talking about products and start talking about services and 'solution
stacks'. It can be indicative that the marketing team have taken over from the engineers
in charge of presenting the company to the outside world, but also shows that customers
are demanding a more professional approach towards the deployment of the technology. This
is certainly the case in the open source software market, where a clutch of new solutions
and services companies have
recently sprung up to guide enterprise customers through the difficulties of open source
software deployment."
" A sure sign of a maturing market is when vendors stop talking about products and start talking about services and 'solution stacks'."
That kind of buzz word lingo is also a sure sign of bloat. It makes my skin crawl to hear words like "solution stack", not only because I don't know what the heck it means, but also because it doesn't mean anything. It's a fuzzy complicated way of saying, "a bunch of related software products that you'll find useful in your company".
I guess for OSS to join the mainstream, it will have to use the same insipid lingo that the big guns like IBM and Symantec are using.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
That's strange, earlier today Slashdot was reporting that Linux developers were too old to cater for young people, and now they are celebrating coming of age. I guess it's time to buy Tux a zimmer frame.
I think that solution stacks are good, especially if you wish to envisioneer web-enabled content through branding front-end e-services.
Do, do not, or delegate to someone else: there is no try.
it means they can use the yahoo chatrooms!
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
... of open source projects? I'd like to the think the majority of OSS work was done out of wanting to create something better (defined many ways) than what was already in existence or at least act as an affordable (as in free) alternative to commercial products. Sure, many OSS products don't quite line up with their commercial counterparts, but obviously many do these days. While it's generally taken much longer for them to get into the spotlight, they got there by being reliable pieces of software and didn't made their mark by filling our heads with buzzwords and marketing material. Now that they are on par with the "big boys", the buzzwords suddenly become less (if at all) meaningful, so the game can really begin. From the article, it seems people still feel OSS is too much of a risk, but as adoption increases, that barrier will slowly start to disappear as well.
the OSS developers who would like to get paid for their superb work. IBM is making it hand over fist deploying OSS and we think it's swell. But as soon as a charitable developer even thinks about a dollar bill the entire OSS community takes him out to the woodshed for being so selfish and violating the spirit of OSS.
It's not anti-OSS to get paid for contributing good code, people!
My skin crawls whenever marketeers speak too. Marketing murders language. It's that simple. If customers knew precisely what they were buying, most probably wouldn't bother. We don't buy ground up dead bovine animal. We buy hamburger.
However, that said, Salespeople (like managers) are a necessary evil. If they didn't create the sizzle, open source would still be a hippie programmer's toy.
This is the development I had hoped for. Marketing "solution stacks" of open source software customized for individual clients is where the real money will be made for most open source firms. Migration of older to newer OSS is also where reasonably good individual consultants can make a living.
It may be yet another abuse of the language, but it it isn't nearly as bad as some of the nonsense I see used. I say suck it up and smell the money...
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Great. Just what we need... for our beloved FLOSS community to become buzzword-compliant.
Maybe they could make some use for my buzzphrase generator...
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I can finally leverage my business paradigms with open-source solution stacks!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Earth to Slashdot editors - learn to tell a press release from a story.
The real OSS service I'm looking for is an industry of companies which specialize in their stable of OSS projects in which they are expert. So I can buy programmer support for an OSS app from any of a number of groups, none of which "own" the SW or the project. I'd like to do a DB query on a CVS repository, to check what code has been contributed by such orgs offering service. Not just as a consumer of the SW, but as a developer, when I want to include an OSS package in my own project, but not enough to gain the expertise.
That kind of service depends on the unique nature of OSS and its projects. It's a tremendous flexibility in available experience, with which proprietary source SW could never compete. And such an ecosystem also represents an extremely productive marketplace for new code shared by everyone. Produced by a "third party" with interest vested more in the quality of the public OSS package than in any tricks keeping it proprietary, despite the rules.
--
make install -not war
... a linguistic solution stack in order to take away added value from your interaction with the marketing engineers. The correct solution stack will enable your business to meet your customers' complete needs for delivery of verbal content designed to maximize their confidence in your area of core expertise - providing software solutions. This is a win-win situation that allows you to focus on excellence while obtaining a higher margin for the same mature products, and maintain a high-quality relationship with your clients. ...Phew!... that's hard...
http://www.welton.it/davidw/