Open source is great! Thats what I truly think.
But there are still many areas that are quite untouched by the open source model, or where it is at least not really successful. For example I did some amount of research on open source ERP software in the last months and I came to the conclusion that theres nothing in open source land out there I would really recommend . (You are welcome to correct me there :)
Open source is very successful on components right now. But what about business software in general or software for special business lines ? I am running a small RCP based project in business software specialized for publishing companies. At least I'm trying to get it started. We are still in an early stage, and theres lots of stuff still missing. But whats the hardest point up to now is growing a community. I don't mean a developer community, but a user community that gives feedback. When I started to work actively on public relations for the project, I found out that many of my potential users had no clue about open source and got at least very suspicious when I told them that the software is free. For me I think that an open source model could be a great opportunity for industries to build software of many kinds in a collaborative way. But time has to tell if managers out there are getting the ideas. I'm still positive, we have three production installation by today and I hope it will grow.
When you invest in a so called "standard software" product today, what many companies find out is, that standard business software needs customization (oh yeah) and the real cost of going live is something vendors (don't want to blame anyone) don't really tell. In many cases you are tied to experts that come at high rates from the vendors. If companies can gather up to a community, they could have much more influence and control over the software they are going to use, they could have they're own in house know how if they wish to -from the beginning- and they could fix a bug when they need to. And not have to wait for the next major release (if the bug got fied at all). I could count up many more advantages. So what do you think, will open source be a model for "standard business software products" ?
