Why pay programmers when a community will do it for free? Because sometimes a community simply won't.
A community-driven open source model works fine (or at least adequately) for more general things that are of interest to a very large prospective user community. As the prospective user community gets smaller, or the prospective users are not as likely to have technical expertise or staff that can contribute, then you'll have issues with the sustainability of the open source model.
As much as I believe in the open source model, in spite of its shortcomings (often demonstrated by broken or horribly designed things in OFBiz), I don't believe it is a good way to run all software efforts (not in our current society and economic model anyway).
The way I like to think of it is that community-driven open source allows users to participate with the software development in a way far more influential than just paying money to a central body (which is usually take it or leave it money, unless a specific customer represents a signifiant part of the market for that particular software, so it's not much influence at all in most cases). However, if the only way a user can interact with the software developer is through money then the community driven open source model is no use to them and isn't likely to succeed.
One example would be a hair salon. If you wanted to develop software for hair salons you may find a few companies that have multiple locations and would be able to pay a consultant to customize software to function how they want. However, the majority are small businesses with small budgets for software, and anything more than a few hundred dollars (or tens of dollars per user per month) will be outside of their budget. They wouldn't even think of hiring a consultant or customizing the software themselves. Their only option is to find an industry specific affordable solution that is sold to many hair salons. If there was a free one they might try it, but only if it was good because they also can't handle support costs and hassles of failure. Of course, they could always just use a paper-based system... ;)
So no, IMO some things don't make sense as a community driven open source effort. Heck, many people don't even understand the idea of a community driven open source project and how things get done in it... or maybe that's most people, including many users of, and contributors to, Apache OFBiz.
-David
On Dec 3, 2009, at 12:31 PM, Adrian Crum wrote:
> Al,
>
> It appears you're arguing against the success of companies like Red Hat, JBoss, and Novell - who all maintain open source software and offer it for free.
>
> If I developed a vertical application, I wouldn't hesitate to contribute it back to the project. Why should I pay a staff of programmers to maintain it when a community of volunteers is willing to do it for free? I'd rather focus my resources on installation, training, and support.
>
> -Adrian
>
> Al Byers wrote:
>> I don't think it is realistic to expect anyone to contribute a quality
>> add-on back to the project and maintain it. All of us that work (or
>> have worked) on the project do so because it contributes financially
>> to us in other ways.
>> If someone was to create a commercially viable add-on, then I think
>> the smart thing to do would be to contribute back a "community"
>> version that captures the essence of the customizations needed for
>> that niche, but reserves a lot of the value added that comes from
>> being experienced in that field for a commercial version. The
>> commercial version could also include support.
>> -Al
Locked
