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Selling Open Source Solutions to Upper Mgmt?

Posted by Cliff on from the making-your-case-to-PHBs dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "I am the single member of the IT department at a small nonprofit. We were looking to replace our commercial content management system with a custom combination of open source solutions (Lucene, Jackrabbit, etc). However, since I was the sole developer, progress was slow and we have little resources to recruit potential volunteers. Recently, we had a closed source, commercial vendor demo their version of a content management system, and immediately upper management was willing to go along with their proposal, even at the expense of project requirements. Although I understand and accept the decision (and am quite relieved I am not expected to deliver as the sole developer), I am interested to know if there are resources for promoting open source software in a manner like closed source, commercial software. If not, is this a challenge within the OS community? It seems that OS solutions are primarily promoted to technical implementors rather than upper management. Of course, many technical implementors do not have the marketing skills to promote open source, but are there resources to help us do so?"

4 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by kosmosik · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well you stated that your process of developing own CMS was slow and the system was incomplete. Your manager had to choose beetween yours not working system and some other system that probably works and can be used now. Manager role is to manage and get things done, not to embrace any ideals. So it is obvious that he preffered working and proven (I assume) but closed solution than open but nonexistant one.

    I don't see how that is not obvious? The manager really have no choice there.

    One issue you should investigate is if this new closed system stores data in a way that it (data) can be transferred to other system if not you will be stuck with this system or will be facing need of reinputting everything from scratch (and this can be very painfull) if you decide to switch.

    1. Re:Huh? by pravuil · · Score: 3, Informative
      Kind of have to agree with the parent on this one. The alternative was better because adoption was practically guaranteed. If you are serious about implementing open source solutions, you do have to put your $0.02 worth in to get the most out of it. Doing it solo seems a bit irresponsible. Ask around, I'm sure someone would have loved to offer their services.

      About marketing; while marketing OSS is a process in itself, some projects do have marketing materials available, just have to know where to find them. Then have to take some time to pick out what works and what doesn't. Examples: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ , http://www.ubuntu.com/products/casestudies , http://www.redhat.com/solutions/intelligence/

      Finally, don't see why this is on the front page. This is a question to the public, not news. Take it to a freakin forum.

  2. Open Source 'Solution'? by Mark+Hood · · Score: 2, Informative
    It seems that there isn't an 'Open Source Solution' at all - 'Solution' implies it fixes the problem. They had a choice:
    1. Buy a true 'solution' from a closed source vendor
    2. Pay you to develop a solution from open source components.

    If there was a solution to sell to 'upper management', you can bet your ass it'd be pushed. As it stands, you're wasting time and money trying to kludge together something that won't work as well as the purchased solution - and management have decided not to gamble on you coming in cheaper, faster and better than the commerical offering (or even the usual "pick two"). Plus, if you get hit by a bus, who'll support it?

    Mark

    For the uninitiated, Jackrabbit is a Java Content Repository, while Lucene is a search engine: both are built on Apache. I think it's safe to say they're components rather than 'solutions', no matter how polished they might be.
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  3. New here? by Bretai · · Score: 3, Informative

    don't see why this is on the front page. This is a question to the public, not news.

    Apparently you're not familiar with the AskSlashdot section. I'll leave it to you to discover what kinds of articles are posted there.

    Secondly, the summary was not posted to the main page, it is just linked there as all articles are now.

    Take it to a freakin forum.

    You mean like /.?

    --
    Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. -Brian Kernigan