Open source can be very, very expensive
I had dinner tonight with a friend and technical consultant jumping from a 3-month mission for an industrial companies to another 3-month mission for another industrial company. So far, so good.
The issue is that one of these clients hates to pay for software and has the weird habit of wanting to develop in-house all its software development tools.
Result is that my friend, unwilling to spend more than 3 months at a client, had to recruit 2 developers to develop tools for IT consultants and software developers to do the job.
Which took them 1 full year. Each are paid respectively EUR36K (junior) and EUR48K (senior; 3 years exp.). That’s EUR84K + 30% of social charges corresponding to the French rate. Hence a total of EUR110K.
As a result, it took one year of a senior and one year of a junior developer to develop an IDE that does maybe 20% of what Websphere or Visual Studio can actually do in terms of both functional breadth and optional depth. Not to mention the absence modularity (vs. modular approaches for Eclipse or Visual Studio through plugins & open APIs). All clear in terms of software expenses: it all cost nothing but 2 computers and electricity. But consider the total cost of ownership of the move: EUR110K (US$ 150K) for an app that barely does one fifth of something that’s free (eg Eclipse) or almost free (Visual Studio 2005, through the Empower Pack)!!
My conclusion: such behaviors harm the software industry. For a number of reasons:
1) if there exists software vendors, it means there exists markets for software vendors and hence clients for such software vendors. Why do some clients believe they can reinvent the wheel? Why can’t they invest a few thousand dollars in Visual Studio, or Rational Rose, or even download Eclipse for free??? That’s such an egotistic thing!
2) they harm the software industry, because not only the steal 2 resources (2 good software developers) to independent software vendors, which are having a hard time recruiting develops because, in part, of competition from IT service companies, but also they display an unpleasant picture of software-savvy people. Let’s assume they would’ve matched the quality of IBM Websphere or MS Visual Studio: do these people think they would have gotten a medal for paying 2 skilled resources for 12 months and hardly matching the existing?
3) open source can be a model, in 2 ways: i) to invent new ways for software developers to collaborate; ii) to wake up established vendors if new releases take too long to go to market (eg Firefox vs. IE6). Such episodes harm the open source software industry, and hence the software industry as a whole – because such approaches are not industrial approaches but amateurish ways of creating applications. By the way, it shows how expensive open source can be in terms of total cost of ownership – if not implemented by pragmatic people but driven-by-ego or even worse, -ideology.
In short, an combo of in-house approach & open source can be a disaster for the software industry, and the nightmare for any chief financial officer.
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I completely agree with you on that issue – I’m a web developer who uses PHP and what not, but when it comes to those software I don’t see how smaller teams can afford to spend the time and money to re-invent something like Visual Basic or whatever.
The only realm where self-developed software can overtake the off-the-shelf solutions is for high-end web design. I’m creating an Adserver engine for an affiliate marketing company that uses XML APIs as well as a customized tracking, member management etc.
It gives me much more flexibility down the road to add functionalities, optimize SQL codes to speed things up and what not, as well as complete control of the CSS design at my own terms.
It’s such a pain in the ass to re-do existing code to fit it in when you do large projects like that – the above project would have been a disastor if I tried to implement Joomla or Mambo with it.
The above example you showed would fit perfectly a scenario where a developer company tried to re-invent PHP or ASP to build their web sites on!!!
It’s a given that most of the IT managers are just trying to keep their job by reinventing the wheel – see the MS Ecosystem (sorry Jeremy, I couldn’t resist
. However, some smart execs understand the power of scarcity : when you have no money (read : budget), the only way for you to succeed is to be creative (read : innovate).
Regarding your story, I wouldn’t be so harsh on the company : both the client AND your friend have failed. The client because she has not been able to keep the project into reasonable timeline. Your friend because he was not creative enough to overcome the resources issue under a tight schedule.
You say your friend doesn’t like to work more than 3 month on the same project (read : client ?) : then why the heck didn’t he chose solutions to keep that timeframe ? We end-users/customers/clients/vendors all know that with software developers, “3 months” means “1 year”. Then, if my client says “I want the SW in 3 months”, I know I have only 1 month do it…
I suppose that your friend was paid for project management during the whole period. So, at the end of the day, he shouldn’t complain nor be so critic against his employer…
See, I do some coaching at a R&D lab in… Belarus : you can’t believe what those folks are able to produce with very scarce resources. A bit of Open-Source, a lot of Creativity : you get awesome In-House developments. In very short time !
Hey Marc, hope you’re good! A few remarks on your comment that is not really accurate:
- ’see the MS Ecosystem’: can you elaborate pls.? I’m very interested in getting the point, thx.
- Nope, my friend hasn’t failed. He tried to convince the management to invest in Websphere or Visual Studio. But he failed to do so: the company never purchases commercial software, whatever the vendor (IBM or Microsoft in this case). The guys wanted to develop their own, in-house tool.
And, my friend refused the mission but hired out 2 brillant engineers (for free, no commission, no project management fees because he was no project manager) to undertake the project that was meant anyways to last one year (not 3 months, I don’t know where you got that).
Jeremy : my comment is based on what I understood from your text. Maybe I got it wrong or… you forgot to put in some info ! A good learning for you @ Microsoft : always consider how your message is conveyed to your target audience
About the MS Ecosystem : MS solutions – Windows first, no matter the version – require heavier technical support than equivalent Linux or Apple’s. Take security issues (e.g. viruses) : using MS Windows means using anti virus, anti spyware, anti whatever. That is the ecosystem.
Thanks for your answer Marc.
I’m sorry Marc, but regarding your first point, you read things that were not included in my initial post. I had thought that info would confuse the message and enlarge it unnecessarily.
Regarding the MS ecosystem: of course Windows first for MSFTees – would you like us to sell Mac OSX or Linux? The thing is that Microsoft invests a lot in interoperability: having MS technologies running on open source platforms is very important to Microsoft (see the Mono project @ Novell; or what Microsoft does with MySQL, Zend, IdealX or Mozilla Corporation @ Corp. level).
Where did you get that Windows needs heavier technical support than Linux or Apple? In my opinion, Linux requires massive support. Indeed, it is not accessible to anyone. And everybody just happens to know Windows already.
Could you please back your stance with sound figures?
Here are 4 links pointing to an independent benchmark that sees Vista as a much more secure platform than Apple Max OS and Linux:
http://blogs.csoonline.com/windows_vista_6_month_vulnerability_report
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/27/024204&from=rss
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/22/report-vista-more-secure-than-os-x-and-linux/
http://www.theopensourcery.com/wordp1/index.php?p=535
I agree Microsoft took time to come up with perfectly secured platforms, but at last, Vista seems to be a true fortress.
Sorry about that Marc
Hello Young Fanboy : I won’t start a sterile argument MacOS vs. Windows here. There are plenty of people on the Blogosphere doing this better than you and I
Plus, your CEO is really a master when it comes to reality distorsion field !!!
About IT support, you may read : http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=12&articleId=298043&intsrc=hm_topic
and this one :
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=298472&intsrc=article_pots_side
ps : ever heard of a virus on Mac OS X ?
You started the MacOS vs. Windows (didn’t mention Apple before you did) thing Marc, so you are the Fanboy
Can you pls. elaborate on your stance regarding Steve B.? I wish I could learn more about it. Can you please bring in facts on the table?
The links you mention point at examples, not independent comparative benchmarks. It’s always possible to find examples in one direction or another.
And you didn’t back your former stance (heavier technical support) with anything so far.