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The Almighty Buck Businesses

Open Sourcing Software in a Large Corporation? 85

Posted by Cliff from the touchy-subjects dept.
code-libre asks: "I work for a small R&D group in a large corporation. We've spent the past few years developing a small but unique piece of software that was originally meant for internal use only. A VP recently approached us and asked if we could 'package and sell' the software so as to get a direct return on investment - at prices as much as $500k. Within our group, we worry about the costs associated with long term support and maintenance. We are also sure that a price over $10k is ludicrous, let alone $500k. I think it would be an excellent move to open source the software, but I need some advice..."
"Even at a price of $10k, we don't expect to sell more than maybe 20-50 licenses. Costs associated with producing this software thus far are approaching $2mil, so we doubt our costs would be recouped. It is thus relatively easy to make the case that we _shouldn't_ sell the software.

On the other hand, it is software that will be vitally useful to those in the right markets. I would like to present the idea that releasing the software for free (and open source) will have two effects: one, branding the software turns it into a free piece of advertisement for our company in emerging markets. Two, open sourcing it will allow for others to help improve the software, which we in turn can use to our advantage - an indirect ROI.

Will points like this fly at a large corporation with little to no policy on giving stuff out for free? How can I convince an older generation of business leaders that FOSS is the way of the future? Ideally, I would like to help the company setup a internal group that could expedite small internal projects to the market place via FOSS routes. Any one have any experience with this?"
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Open Sourcing Software in a Large Corporation? More

Open Sourcing Software in a Large Corporation?

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @07:38PM (#12828418)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • GPL is your friend here.
      If you are in a proprietary software market, your competitors wouldn't be allowed to used GPLed source.
      But you get the advantages of giving your software freely to anyone who wants to play with it. Your company would be a nice company.
      Of course, free support from the "community" could or could not happen, you shouldn't count on it.
      You should only GPL your software, from a bussiness sense, if you want to make your software more used, or if you want to undermine your proprietary softwa
      • While the GPL is a better choice than BSD if your purpose in open sourcing it is publicity; I don't think the GPL is quite restrictive enough. If someone doesn't like the way you manage the project, they can just fork it and remove all references to your company except a small blurb on a well-hidden about page...

        That of course depends on how many ass-holes decide to use your software that don't like your company...

    • Re:stop thinking logically (Score:5, Informative)

      by bradkittenbrink ( 608877 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @10:53AM (#12832272) Homepage Journal

      The poster is not thinking logically, for example:

      "Even at a price of $10k, we don't expect to sell more than maybe 20-50 licenses. Costs associated with producing this software thus far are approaching $2mil, so we doubt our costs would be recouped. It is thus relatively easy to make the case that we _shouldn't_ sell the software.

      The $2mil is a sunk cost. It is irrellevant to whether or not you should try to sell the software. The decision does not depend on how you can recoup all of your losses, it depends solely on how you can minimize your losses. That doesn't mean that selling closed source is the best way to minimize losses, but that's the way you have to think about the problem.

      • You're missing the fact that not releasing this software means the competitors will need to develop the software themselves..at a 2 mill setback.

        So the choice is..keep competitive advantage within the company, or make 200-500k.

        Considering this, and the small market, I don't see ANY advantage to open sourcing it. It's not like open sourcing it will mean hordes of programmers improving your software for free. It means giving up your competitive advantage.
    • Besides, if you they decide to go with your plan and it doesn't work out to what they *imagined* they would earn otherwise, then consider yourself canned.

      He's going to get canned eventually if he doesn't leave - this is the 2000's, not the 1950's. Nobody is a 'lifer', especially if they want to be.

      At least by GPL'ing it he can continue to work on his project when he leaves.

  • Dream on. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Electroly ( 708000 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @07:41PM (#12828441)
    From what I can deduce from your post, you've got basically zero chance of convincing the higher-ups. And frankly, I'm not even sure that open sourcing it is a good idea, anyway. If your target market is 20-50 customers and it's a niche piece of software, you're dreaming if you think anyone is going to do any work on it, much less submit patches back. You're essentially giving your $2 million of R&D away for free with no gain for the company. No corporation is gonna go for that.
    • I think you have a chance. Just look much more closely at the facts than being an opensource evangelist or proponent of the proprietary.

      What state is the software in? Whats the potential market and the competitors in them? How much money can the potential buyers spend on it?

      After that, comes the feasibility of selling it at all. The code must be changed to make it installable on various platforms, multiple OSes and databasen etc. Must be TESTED. All that takes money which should be guaranteed in the retur
      • They dont have to make a profit, just offest the costs. Doesn't mean they have to make back all $2 mill, but $200k would be noticable.

        The added support cost for the software clients would also go into improving thier own software, for their own company, so its hard to say that its too much work.

        If the marketshare is soo close, then you are giving a benefit to direct competitors. opensource isn't happening.

        If you are really serious you can take the project on your own using your personal knowlege to make
    • If I was in your management chain, I would be greatly concerned about the intelligence and usefulness of such a person working for me who, not understanding the value of their work and the investment of the company into their work, wanting to give it all away, or sell it on the cheap.
      • I would be concerned if I was a manager at your company for not thinking creatively.

        Software development is a sunk cost. Any other use of it is a win unless support costs outweigh the amount of licensing. If they sell 30 software licenses at 10k each then that is 300,000. Also that is 30 companies they will have to support. This may mean hiring more people. If the software usefulfness lasts 5 years, then hiring an extra programmer at 60k a year to do support will nullify the gain of selling the software f

        • What is it about open source that makes it equal pixie dust in the imagination of Slashdot posters?

          Open Source != others magically do free "code maintenance."

          That's like saying giving a teenager the keys to your car means they'll get you that oil change and take it to the car wash and return the tank full of gas. Not likely.

          99% of people who see code should NOT be doing maintenance on it. They didn't spend the time to understand the design, they don't have the training to code, and they are as likely to
          • But, you don't know who the customers of this type of software are. I never said open source is a pixie dust that will solve everyone's problems but it is something to consider. And just because this person considered it does not make him non useful or stupid.

          • That's like saying giving a teenager the keys to your car means they'll get you that oil change and take it to the car wash and return the tank full of gas. Not likely.

            Bad analogy.
            Maybe it's like giving a teenager the keys to my dirty car on a Saturday, he pays for the fuel, and doesn't break it, I don't need it, and maybe, he might wash it for his night out, on his time.

            It's work that people give away, not stuff.
    • "code libre" - you should first donate your salary to FOSS. Giving away other peoples property is an easy concept for you but will you put your own money where your mouth is?

      p.s I have some magic beans to sell you

    • Re:Dream on. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Yaztromo ( 655250 )

      If your target market is 20-50 customers and it's a niche piece of software, you're dreaming if you think anyone is going to do any work on it, much less submit patches back.

      Even the smallest projects can form a community if they are sufficiently unique, and meet a need that isn't met elsewhere.

      It's hard to say anything about the target market of a piece of software without knowing more about the software in question. Those 20 - 50 customers may be those who are willing (and able) to pay $10k USD fo

    • If your target market is 20-50 customers and it's a niche piece of software, you're dreaming if you think anyone is going to do any work on it, much less submit patches back.

      That depends very much upon who those customers are, how big they are, if they have in-house development (as they might if the poster does) and how much work needs to go into customizing it.

      Throughout the 80s and 90s this sort of thing was very common in the networking field and tier-1 ISPs, universities, and hardware vendors wou

  • While I support Open Source... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rogabean ( 741411 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @07:43PM (#12828458)
    I would prolly caution you to be careful with this. You say this software is reaching close to 2mil in development costs. That's quite hefty for an internal piece of software. Open sourcing the software could be of great benefit... but make sure that you don't open source you or anyone you work with out of a job if it turned out that less devs were needed. (I don't know enough about your current situation)

    As to how to approach the VP and other PHB's... You're going to have to go the only route that will make sense to them... Show how it will help their bottom line. That is why he came to you to begin with, and it's what he wants to hear. Giving away software he is looking to sell isn't going to recoup the costs of developing said software.

    Sell support perhaps?
    Maintain two versions? An open source version that feeds into closed version perhaps?

    This is a tough one if your VP's mindset is dollars.

    I had zero luck with it at with one of my previous employers where I was in a similiar situation (although with less 0's in the figures) I just couldn't find a way to appeal to what they wanted to see... money.
    • I think his VP is right: open sourcing it doesn't make any sense. In fact, for 90% of the software out there, open source is not the best model as far as ROI is concerned. Unless you have something you want to make into a standard or you have other ways to compete, you won't win anything by open sourcing stuff.
      • Exactly - even if sharing the program wouldn't result in a competitors gaining a significant advantage over your company, 'open source' implies a much larger scale of colaboration. What you might suggest would be more along the lines of a 'strategic partnership' or something along those lines - an agreement to share the burden of development of the code. With $2M in development costs, flat-out giving it away to the world sounds like an iffy case, at best, to make even if, as you say, supporting it as a co
      • On the other hand, unless you actually are a software company, used to selling products such as this, it's guaranteed to cost you even more to set up a professional organization around the product and then it will cost and cost and cost as part of your company is diverted from its core purpose to a whole new one.

        If it's good enough to make money and enough of it, fork the unit into a new subsidiary company that gets to stand on its own, wether as opensource or proprietary software.

        But if it isnt that good

    • Maybe they want to justify your salary ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gorim ( 700913 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @10:41PM (#12829457)
      Look, if they think they can sell even 1 $500k license, thats better than the 10-20 $10k licenses you are proposing.

      If the VP approached you about this, its probably because he knows much more about the $500k possibility than you do. Take it as a hint that something is really there, rather than something maybe being there.

      Besides, maybe the VP also wants to make sure your salaries are justified in the face of out-sourcing or cost-cutting measures.
    • Create an "full" package that includes the source and licensce it for extra $$. Anyway for products of the VP pricepoint it would not be strange to deliver the sources with the product.
    • The other side is who would benefit from this software? Your competitors or your customers? What benefit do you get from advertising it to your competitors? Does the software give your company a competitive advantage? I mean there better be a good reason for spending two million dollars. If it is worth 2 million dollars to your company it could very well be worth 500k to others.

  • Business impact analysis (Score:5, Insightful)

    by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @07:47PM (#12828496)
    What you need to do is write up a business impact analysis for the various options.

    You're already thinking in the right ways - C/B of selling at a certain price.

    Don't forget support commitments, opportunity cost of turning your R&D lab into a customer facing "profit" center, etc.

    Also, don't be surprised if, as you go through the process, you find that a certain price-point, set of behaviours, or various possible changes would make it profitable.

    • Um, that's a really good way to get fired. If you are a programmer, stick to programming. Don't get into things you know nothing about. You wouldn't want the VP lecturing to you about programming. Don't tell other people how to do their job. You've already suggested the possibility of open sourcing it, and they didn't like that idea. Arguing with top management is not a good career move.

  • Who Owns it? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by guard952 ( 768434 )
    You built the software for the company, meaning they contracted you to build it for them.
    That means it's their software doesn't it?
    • So what? He's not disputing the company's right to profit from the software. He's just arguing over the best way of doing so.
  • If it's useful to a niche market, you're essentially asking the company to give away what could be a competitive advantage - something they developed at great cost. This is probably part of the half-million dollar price tag they're tossing about.

    And if it's so wonderful, the market price may be higher than you think. Toss in the source code for the customer, and you may wiggle around your concerns of having to do so much support & customization; and maybe you can even get some of the source code for cu

  • Take the money (Score:4, Insightful)

    by abradsn ( 542213 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @07:52PM (#12828537) Homepage
    A piece of software that is worth that much should be taken full advantage of. This is what R&D is meant to do for a company. If you are in R&D this is supposed to be your job, and it is supposed to pay off for your employer someday. Don't complain when this actually ends up successfull.
    Open source should not be a consideration for this unless there is some other mitigating concern? Such as the company needs open source, or the software is stagnant because the company doesn't have the resources to apply towards development.
    You can always Open source it later.
  • Be careful about jumping into open-source. Remember, most successful projects scratch the itch of a developer. Chances are, this is a product of interest mainly to large companies -- not your average Linux hacker - open source won't be a panacea. A model that combines open-source and the associated benefits with a per-seat support contract, could very well work, however. Considering the huge investment ($2m) your company has made, it's certainly worthwhile to try to recoup as much as possible. It nearly g

  • Sales (Score:2, Troll)

    by nepheles ( 642829 )

    "Even at a price of $10k, we don't expect to sell more than maybe 20-50 license"

    Very few products have a market this small. If you can get it off the ground, to the point that you ship just 20, there's no reason 200, 2,000, or more is not an option. Don't write off the chance of making some money, or at least the opportunity of recouping some of your investment.

    • Re:Sales (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      what he doesn't GET is that the software they've made is unlikely probably to sell 1000 pieces AT ANY PRICE.

      there's big chances that it's only usable for use in similar big corporations to their own - and they can afford to pay 500 000$ if the software cost 2 mil to develope(but there probalby is under 100 companies that would be candidates to be customers anyway).

      basically... what would be the point of open sourcing it? for fun? if the vp wanted you to package it for selling(at half a mil a pop) then

  • No need to worry about support effort required (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke ( 850482 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @08:09PM (#12828640)
    If they try and charge $500k and don't sell any, you won't have a problem (at least not that problem, anyway).

  • "We" who? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DerekLyons ( 302214 ) <fairwater@gmaLISPil.com minus language> on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @08:13PM (#12828675) Homepage
    Even at a price of $10k, we don't expect to sell more than maybe 20-50 licenses.
    And of course 'we' (the R&D group) have done a complete market survey, yes?
    We are also sure that a price over $10k is ludicrous, let alone $500k.
    Ah, no 'we' haven't done any marketing work - 'we' are just guessing and assuming 'we' know more than the folks who are paid to do such things.
    On the other hand, it is software that will be vitally useful to those in the right markets.
    Unlike your average Slashgeek, companies who are serious about making money don't quail at spending money to make more. That's why the company you are working for funds and R&D group in the first place!
  • The main economic cases for open sourcing the software are:

    - the community will provide "free" maintenance to it
    - your company can provide expert support for it, for a fee

    You mentioned that you have qualms about the second one, and so the question is whether the VP will value the potential savings in maintenance costs enough to give up whatever competitive advantage your firm gains by keeping the software to itself.

    I would suggest that you start by advocating opening up parts of it, perhaps under a BSD s
    • Or even simpler: sell the software for $500k, and then sell the support for another $200k a year. Nobody's gotten rich from open source yet, but the former approach is a pretty good way to make money. You think Adobe would have as much money as they do if they gave away all of their products and charged for support? Don't forget that anyone can provide support, it's a very competitive business.

      I still don't get why people think open source will be so great for their company. It's like giving away large
      • I think open source can be good when the open codebase facilitates collaboration and makes it possible for more companies to invest in a standard (which is effectively the shared codebase).

        Operating system technology is a good target for OSS collaboration, not in the FSF sense but in a very business-oriented economies of scale way. I find the FSF annoying and irrational, btw.

        Giving away OSS software and charging for support isn't a good model unless you're really selling a service that the customer needs
        • I don't think the FSF is irrational; I think people just don't understand what they are about. Their explicit purpose is to advance free software. Open source (in general) is more about standardization than free software, so the FSF often takes the opposite viewpoint.

          I pretty much agree with the rest of your point. Standardization, such as making the operating system a commodity, can go a long way. There is no justification for paying fees to a single entity (Microsoft, Sun, IBM, whoever) for a commodi
  • Some companies share their source code but only with customers, or share the source to anyone but demand paid licenses for commercial use. OpenMFG is one. There's also typically a guarantee that the product would become fully open source if abandoned.
  • Even at a price of $10k, we don't expect to sell more than maybe 20-50 licenses. Costs associated with producing this software thus far are approaching $2mil, so we doubt our costs would be recouped. It is thus relatively easy to make the case that we _shouldn't_ sell the software.

    No, it isn't, not on that basis. All the money you have spent on the project thus far is sunk cost, meaning that money is gone whether you open source, sell binaries, or do nothing.

    The only figure that matters now is revenu

    • The problem with convincing PHBs about revenues from an existing project is one of confidence and reasonable hand-waving. Everyone else here is saying that the project will have to convince the VP that it will bring in revenue and be a profit maker for the company. The key issue is how this is presented to the VP. Speak calmly and boldly, be sure of what you are trying to ask for and what you want to get out of the discussion.

      The submitter will have to say that the R&D costs are recouped internally,

      • Then we ask: who will use the software and how will having the source code help them?

        That's is the problem with pretty much all the open-source advocates in this thread, right there. What the VP will be asking, since he has a clue about how to run a business for profit, is "Who will use the software, and how will them having the source benefit us?" How it benefits anyone else is utterly irrelevant, unless benefitting them indirectly costs the employer, in which case it is definitely a bad thing.

        This

        • Who will use the software, and how will them having the source benefit us?

          Good point. Well made.

          he should be fired immediately, and replaced by someone whose work is going to benefit the employer who's paying for it

          May I slap you with "diversity is good; monoculture bad"? I would have said that having employees capable of independent thought and also capable of asking questions and leading the company to potential new markets and products is a good thing.

          P.S. Remind me never to work for you :P

          • May I slap you with "diversity is good; monoculture bad"?

            You may try, sir, but I shall deftly duck with "and I never said otherwise". :-)

            My objection to the submitter's approach (as I've interpreted it from the description we have here) isn't that he's aware of alternative approaches, nor that he wants to bring them to the attention of management if they might be useful. Both of these are good things.

            However, he seems to be advocating an alternative on the assumption that it is correct, and giving

  • How can I convince an older generation of business leaders that FOSS is the way of the future?

    Well, you can start by addressing their priorities. They're not the least bit interested in vague claims that open sourcing is "the way of the future" or that an FOSS project will pay for itself in good publicity. They want specifics: numbers, precedents, cost-benefit analyses. If you're not prepared to offer them these things, you're wasting your time.

    And don't underestimate them either. Don't assume that th

  • A company who needs/wants the software you describe makes two evaluations:
    1) Is the purchase price going to be offset by reducing costs or increasing sales (ROI)
    2) Is it cheaper to purchase existing software or write your own (taking into consideration that purchased software may not be an exact fit)

    If your company invested $2million in this project, they obviously think the ROI is going to be $2mill+.

    If I was faced with the opportunity to pay $0.5mill to get $2mill return, my choice would be obvious.
  • Use the fact that the source is available as a bargaining feature to your customers. Don't GPL it, use a more restricted licence that says they can 'look, change, hand back changes, discuss on internal forums, but not distribute outside of the contract parties'.

    Keep in mind that in many cases, your customers will not be interested in seeing the source. They want turn-key black boxes.

    It might be that your case is different, leading to more customers and actual contributions to the code base. In that

  • ROI - Thinking Backwards (Score:3, Informative)

    by medcalf ( 68293 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @11:04PM (#12829585) Homepage
    You guys are thinking backwards on ROI. The company has already spent the ~$2M - that's a sunk cost. Presumably, they have recouped, or will soon, the cost of this in internal business advantage. In other words, the costs to look at are the costs of selling and supporting it versus the income from selling licensing and/or support.

    Without critical missing data, the ROI can only be guessed at. I'm supposing that the marketing types have already determined that number, from this point, is positive in a reasonable time period. Presumably, from the range of prices and size of the market as discussed, demand is price-inelastic, which makes sense if the business types are expecting a positive ROI from supporting the software. I cannot evaluate, either, the business impact on selling the product: if it provides a critical market advantage to the company (presumably it does, with that kind of R&D behind it), selling it may not make sense because of the loss of competitive advantage in a small market served by what (given the budget) must be large enterprises. I will simply assume that the business people have done their job, and that any loss would be smaller than the expected ROI gain.

    Balanced against the net of ROI less the loss of competitive advantage, code_libre offers branding and getting back improvements. I suspect that the likelihood of getting the product improved by outside coders, given its niche character and the large amount of development effort already invested, is small. Thus the balance is net gain opposed to branding gains.

    If the gain from branding can be quantified (or if a qualitative argument can be made that the company can be the single source of software, and thus related services and products, in a captive market), it is possible that the business would agree to open source the product.

    But given just the information above, if I was asked to make the call, I would be disinclined to open source it. A captive niche market will often pay outrageous prices for software. Consider this: imagine if the software in question worked out when an airline should carry extra fuel, as opposed to when it should fly a leg with minimum safety margins, in order to take advantage of the cost differentials between fuel prices in different airports. Not a lot of customers, but each one could save millions of dollars a year (well, Delta did, and it can be extrapolated that others would, too). They would thus be likely willing to spend a million dollars to buy an enterprise license for the software: though the cost is huge, the benefit is even larger.

    So from what I know, this would be a seriously uphill battle even if the company did have a robust history of open sourcing non-core software.
  • If you can't package it up for sale to paying customers, you can't package it up for the Open Source market, either.

    If you can't support paying customers, you can't support the Open Source market, either.

    If you're never going to have more than a few dozen paying customers, you're never going to have more than a few dozen Open Source customers, either.

    Seriously, if you're an R&D branch, just toss the package over the wall to production, and let them figure out what to do with it. If you're afraid of
    • Sounds like the best idea so far, when sales crash and burn he can always say "we gave $2M worth of software to production that we use everyday, and sale dept. can't even generate 1/10th it value in sales!"

  • A terrible idea -- probably (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Malor ( 3658 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @11:16PM (#12829624) Journal
    Your business obviously thought this software was valuable enough to spend two million bucks making it. It's a competitive advantage; you have it, and the other people in your industry don't.

    If you open source your software, then your competitors get it too. But instead of spending two million bucks, they get it for free, so they have money to spend on OTHER stuff that YOUR company doesn't have. You are weakening yourselves considerably, hoping to get a payoff of equal or greater value.

    So you'd need outside code contributed that would be worth at least another couple million. The chances of that happening are laughably small. Unless your software addresses a very broad horizontal market (at least tens and probably hundreds of thousands of possible installations), there's no way you'd ever get two million bucks' worth of patches.

    The LAMP programs, Linux, Apache, mysql, and Perl, have probably gotten that level of free time donated. But there are very few others, and you most likely don't have 'the new Apache' on your hands. Let's charitably put that chance at 'tiny'.

    Not all code should be or needs to be free. You would definitely be doing your customers a favor if you included the source code with the product, with strong restrictions on what they can do with it. But just releasing it into the wild directly and immediately harms you a great deal, and has only a small chance of paying off.

    From the very rudimentary data provided, it looks like open sourcing your product is almost exactly the worst thing you could do.
  • Okay, you're saying that your company was willing to spend $2M to develop this, but no other company would pay more than $10K to acquire it? If you really mean that, you must think your management are complete morons to have paid you to do this. Reversing it, if it was worth $2M to your company, why is it so inconceivable that it might be worth a quarter that to someone else? I'll assume here that you hadn't really thought about it that way, and go a different direction.

    Assume you're right and it's only
  • ...to suggest this roughly $2 million ago.

    Open source works well in development. It diffuses costs and gives you more resources to work with in manpower. It doesn't work as well after you've spent $2 million bucks and then give the software away freely to everybody.

    The real debate here is that if you switch to a better system for less than the maintenance costs of your current in-house one-- which would be the only reason to not be eager to sell it--, you should RUN RUN RUN and buy it. Stop throwing money
  • If it's half as large as you would indicate, your company already pays millions upon millions for software annually. You'd be amazed by what companies pay for Oracle, PeopleSoft, Windows, Office, Exchange, etc.

    Hell, the per-user list price for an Exchange Client Access License (CAL) is $67 a seat. Assuming you have 10,000 employees, each of whom has a PC. That's $670,000 annually for email, not including the base price of the Exchange server. Note that each Exchange CAL gives you an Outlook CAL "for free",
  • They won't go for it after spending so much, nobody would contribute anything to such a niche application even in they did agree, and you'll look bad for even suggesting it.

  • Pay attention to what RMS actually *says* (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sickofthisshit ( 881043 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @10:03AM (#12831943) Journal
    Somebody wasn't paying attention to RMS's actual ideas.

    1) FREE AS IN SPEECH, NOT FREE AS IN BEER.

    If you feel so strongly, the customer can be given the source along with supporting documentation, a one year contract for support, customization, or whatever, and your company still gets money. Speech can be private, and can be compensated for.
    The *real* point of Open Source is no secrets between developer and user. Nothing says Bob on the street corner needs to know.

    Nobody says you have to put it on SourceForge. I suspect 99% of projects on SourceForge don't belong there anyway, and that about 5% of downloaders from SourceForge do something to change the source code, and less than 1% actually do any useful development to support the project. Basically, I see SourceForge as a vanity press: anyone can upload their new Java-based MP3 jukebox alpha-quality software, and feel like they are part of some cool movement, striking a blow against the man. But that's another topic.

    2) Quick career hint: a company pays your salary because it thinks it is getting something *more* valuable in return, not to send you on some ego trip as an OSS missionary. Save that for when it is *your* company.

    If you are known to higher-ups in the company as someone who was absolutely essential in a multi-million dollar revenue stream, and is likely to do similar things in the *future,* they might not outsource your job to India. (Unless you are already working there, in which case, they won't outsource it to China.)

    And if you are tired of working for your company, that kind of dollar figure next to "head developer" will get you hired a lot more quickly than "code monkey."
  • If the cost to "productize" and maintain the software is higher than what you'll get from the pessimistic scenario (according to you, 20 x 10k + whatever you could get from selling support), then it's a risk probably not worth taking, so opensourcing it will only bring benefits (goodwill, possibly selling support, and possibly sharing the maintenance costs with other companies).

    However, if there's a good chance you might net more by selling than you might save (or net) by opensourcing, I believe it would b
  • Sourcefire (makers of SNORT) could probably give some advice on how they went about charging for a free product. Good article in the latest Howard Business Monthly (Sourcefire is based out of Columbia, MD... abt 10 mins from house, which is in Howard County, MD)

    http://www.bizmonthly.com/6_2005/1.shtml [bizmonthly.com]

    Perhaps you can convince the Powers That Be that they can charge for it *and* still release it to the world for free.

    --Dave
  • You say that even at $10k/unit, you'd sell only 10-50 licenses. Are those your numbers or the salespeoples'? Believe it or not, salespeople have *much* better knowledge of what can be sold, and how much it can be sold for, than you do!

    Even so, if you sell 10 licenses at $10k each you've still made a *known* $100k, plus probably 20% more per year on a support contract. Open sourcing it for free advertising/word of mouth is an unknown quantity, and most companies with half a brain will go for the known over

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