I met with an Alfresco customer this morning - one of the world's largest law firms. We were talking about some of the other technology that this CIO deploys within the firm, and he made a very interesting comment.
One of the firm's preferred vendors has recently fallen on financial difficulties, and the CIO attributed a significant part of this economic malaise to the ISV's proprietary software model. More to the point, he lamented the likelihood that this company will go out of business and take its exceptional technology with it. As he said:
"It's very frustrating to see such exceptional technology locked up in a small company."The next time someone says that prorietary software and open source software can coexist - that there isn't any one "right" model, remember this CIO's words He's definitely getting shafted by this company's decision to keep its code proprietary. Sure, he probably has an escrow agreement with the vendor, but that's not even half the problem. The problem is that this company is missing out on external development in its growth, and community continuation of the code beyond its corporate lifetime.
If you are a small company, your problem is not guarding your IP. Your problem is getting people to use it. Open source is the ideal way to make this happen. Hiring an army of sales people is the absolute right way to drive your company into extinction, nine times out of 10.
And if you're a big customer? You still don't have an IP problem. As Mike Moritz of Sequoia has said, having lots of customers is a better barrier to entry than lots of IP. Either way, open source is the right way to go.
Burn the boats. It really is liberating to open up one's IP, both for vendors and for the enterprises that buy from them. Just ask my CIO friend. Proprietary software has left him stranded.
Posted by Matt Asay on January 24, 2007 09:27 AM
