Tying a Bow On Open Source

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Phil's picture

Chris Coppola has posted a good overview of the discussions that were had at the Open Source Think Tank on his blog. I thought I'd add my comments as well.

When listening to attendees at this conference, I was reminded of Geoffrey Moore's book "Crossing the Chasm". In that book, the notion of different types of customers exist where there are "Early Adopters", "Early Majority", "Late Majority", and "Laggards". The "Chasm" is presumed to exist between the "Early Adopters" and the "Early Majority". That is to say, to move into the "mainstream", a technology needs to appeal to a larger group of users than just the bleeding edge "early adopters".

Early adopters are characterized as being willing to deal with the risks of an imperfect or incomplete solution in return for a competitive advantage from the technology offered. In terms of FOSS this risk includes license ambiguity, uncertain support models, dealing with a crop of very small vendors, and different software acquisition models (subscription, dual licensing, etc). Most of the customers at the think tank I would characterize as "early adopter" types. They had taken the time to understand these issues/risks and were comfortable with them. There were however a few that seemed to come from the "early majority" and they were less accepting of FOSS.

Early majority consumers of FOSS care less about how or why FOSS is different than conventional software and more about what problem it solves for them. It's all about "the solution". Early majority customers are reluctant to "change their ways" in order to consume FOSS. Instead, FOSS must conform to fit their mode of operation.

For example, it needs to come in through the same procurement channels as other commercial software (preferably from an existing VAR or other partner). The collateral used to evaluate the FOSS needs to be the same as for commercial software. This means user success stories, technical, and business-return oriented white papers, head-to-head competitor comparison reports, etc. Also, the FOSS product vendor needs to explain the ecosystem surrounding the product with professional services, support, interoperable ISVs, etc.

These are the things that can help the adoption of various FOSS projects penetrate into the wider audience of the "Early Majority" of technology consumers. One attendee at the think tank called this "tying the bow" on open source. These are the things that a commercial venture can do to augment the technical community around a FOSS project, hopefully in a symbiotic manner so that the community and the company can flourish together. I don't think that I had fully appreciated this notion before the think tank. Hence, I'm glad I went. As Chris mentioned in his blog, Thanks to Andrew Aitken and Mark Radcliff for hosting this event.