Slashdot Mirror
Selling Open Source Solutions to Upper Mgmt?
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?"
This is not opensource vs closed source at all, at least from the description, but a far simpler, custom build vs off-the-shelf AND/OR inhouse vs external.
Simply put the poster has tried, and failed to get a self developed system going to replace an existing system. Fed up with the delays management has now decided to go for a ready made system. It just so happens that the selfmade system including opensource components while the commercials vendor is not.
However the nature of the source code does NOT matter in this case.
What seems to matter is that management seems to think that the off-the-shelf system will be ready of use sooner and with less hassle then the custom system. They are willing to trade in flexibility that a custom solution can give for this.
This is a sound business decision, not a correct one perhaps, it depends on what exactly they are given up and just how far along the custom setup is.
This is NOT a failure of opensource, if an outside vendor offered a readymade solution using opensource would it not be accepted? The article does not suggest that.
Rather they choose off-the-shelf ready NOW if less flexible software over flexible custom made but so far pie-in-the-sky software.
Personally I have come to hate off-the-shelf content systems with a passion. They never ever work and you spend far more time customizing them to suit your needs then you would building your own system in the first place BUT the difference is that the ready made system is "ready" sooner. Compare it like this, a custom car build up from the ground won't be ready to drive until at least the frame has been finished the drive mecchanics attached, the engine bolted on, some kind of steering fixed up etc etc. Probably after a lot of work. On the other hand an existing car destined to be modified can be driven at day one. Sure, if you want to drive it on day two, three etc you are going to have an hell of job to actually modify it in any significant way BUT you can.
And that is what management often wants. Not a quality product at some point in the future but something that works to a minimum standard today. If that means they will then have to be satisfied with that minimum for all time, so be it. Because lets face it, the custom product might still deliver nothing even after several months.
Personally I have taken the following solution, develop such software in your own time so that you only have to sell it to management once you have a working product. You then "charge" this in whatever form you like, free time, a raise whatever to make up for the free time you spend on it. It works very well, you end up with a system to maintain that actually does what you want it to, management gets their instant result and if you fail at the building it, well it is just your own free time, so who is going to care?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If in this day and age you are asking slashdot nonsense like this then its pretty clear that 'management' should not be relying on you to provide them with any decision making information. There are a plethora of solutions out there. Its pretty clear you are unwilling or unable to do the grunt work to actually research this. There is no 'selling', commercial offerings rule because traditionally they have been better and more feature complete. Thats not to say the market will not or is not currently changing but the 'selling' points remain the same.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
In my experience the largest group of companies that at pushing OS are small VAR's. Think about the model open or closed source there customizations are work on contract so belong to the client anyway so it's not much different and compared to closed source they can have higher margins / lower bid price. From a management perspective they get somebody in a nice suit that can give them a fixed bid to implement the solution and somebody to pay for support. Unfortunately most of these VAR's are fairly small and the larger ones end up selling there sole to the closed source camp for lower wholesale prices and thus better profits / more business to people that are asking for closed source products. Anyway if the deal is not done I would find a local VAR and ask them to bid on a solution and you can possibly get back that requirements and a fixed time to delivery and price that management wants possibly lower than what the closed source vendor.
No sir I dont like it.
Organisations selling solutions for cash can afford to employ people to sell them. This isn't an open vs closed source thing - companies could sell services around open source content management systems.
Jackrabbit? Lucene? CMS?
You've got to be kidding.
Especially when you have limited resources, don't re-invent the wheel. There are several open-source CMS packages to choose from. You shouldn't be building your own without an EXTREMELY good reason.
You're not seeing the forest for the trees.
If you're a one-man IT shop, you should be focusing on larger popular packages and let the community take care of the little nuts-and-bolts that make the big things work. Also, your solutions, need to be so simple and generic that you can hand it off to someone else when necessary.
That's probably why you lack help. You're way out in left field and everyone, including your manager, can tell.
Do you want to sell upper management on quality or OSS?
Troll? No.
Now, the moderators haven't gotten past the first 2 lines, have you tried selling management on the "best tool for the job"? If the solution works, what does it matter if its OSS or not? The beauty of the question is the freedom to choose from as wide a pool of candidates for the best overall solution to the task.
Experience shows managers worry about two things: will it get the job done? And, will it be a problem later?
If you present management with any information beyond that, you are just asking for trouble.
Options:
Option 1, the boss heard, it works and won't cause a problem. Option 2, he heard: "GPL" - What the fuck? "Community support" - Damn, no formal support plan? Who do I call? "Write our own extensions" - Now I have to hire a programmer?
Hint
Tell a manager nothing more than he really needs to make a decision.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
The biggest problem I have when I evaluate OSS software is that usually the people pushing it have given no thought to if it does what I want well. So there are all kinds of compromises I'd have to make. When these come up, the advocates act like I should be perfectly ok with that, even happy, because I am getting OSS. No, sorry, wrong. I have a set of things I want/need to do and if your package can't handle that, well then too bad it just isn't a realistic contender. I am not going to compromise because of ideology, especially in a business.
So what you have to do is find out everything that the commercial package does that they care about and make sure the OSS solution does it at least as well. This needs to be done before hand. "But we have the code so we can fix it," is not an acceptable excuse. If it really is going to be pushed as a replacement, it needs to be just that, meaning that it can replace all the functions needed.
You can't make any excuses for your software. You need to make sure that it really is as good a solution. If it isn't in certain ways, well you need to admit that to yourself and to them. Trying to say "Well that's not important," doesn't cut it.