Open Source Reality Check (Friday, July 21, 2006)
This post used to exist over here but has since been removed and was brought to my attention by @boyink which tweeted this:
EL founder @rickellis on open-source vs. commercial apps (with comments from creator of WP). Oldie but goodie: http://t.co/GR5Wc6B #eecms
This whole open source issue has been brought up again lately so that article from 2006 suddenly became very relevant. Anyway, the web.archive.org URL was too slow for my instapaper to grab it so I decided to republish the content here.
Open Source Reality Check
Friday, July 21, 2006 by Rick Ellis
There has been a long-running debate as to the relative merits of open source vs. closed source (commercial) as a software development model. Itās a tired debate, frankly, but it resurges all the time. Note: When I refer to āopen sourceā Iām talking about the licensing of the product. The source code of our publishing software is open, itās just not distributed under an open source license.
Just to stir up the pot Iām going to say something to irritate proponents of open source: Commercial development almost always produces more compelling applications, faster development, and provides a better customer experience. There, I said it. If you think Iām wrong, prove it.
If you think open source is the end-all of software development, show me the open source equivalents of Photoshop, ProTools, DreamWeaver, MS Office, PageMaker, BBEdit, World of Warcraft, QuickBooks, FinalCutPro, Performer, and thousands of other successful applications. For every product I listed there are many viable commercial alternatives, but only a few open source ones. The few that exists usually can not match the capability or raw development speed of their commercial counterparts.
The only open source companies that can compete on a similar level are those that generate enough revenue from ancillary sources to support a large development effort. In other words, only the big, well organized, well funded companies like PHP, MySQL, and Linux. A rare breed indeed. For every MySQL there are thousands of others that canāt create a model that produces a highly competitive, revenue-generating business, and thousands of commercial companies that can. In some limited realms like operating systems and server platforms open source has proven to be superior, but these are exceptions. Overall itās not even a contest.
Paul reminded me that about two years ago when the open source blogging tool WordPress was released, the developer posted on his site that in six months they would support all the features of our own ExpressionEngine. Not only has that prediction not come to fruition, but we have continued widening the technological gap. We also have profitability and sustainability.
WordPress does have more users then us due to its freeness; thereās certainly value in that so Iām not minimizing having lots of users, but when your app is free your users are not producing ānowā cash flow. A popular free app might allow you to sell your company to Yahoo at some point in the future, but without revenue you donāt have a business right now. You have a dream for the future. Sure you can raise VC funds, but you still do not have a model that produces revenue directly from your product. Youāll have to provide services or think creatively about how to make money which comes at the price of your ability to focus all your efforts on development.
Open source proponents always tout community contributed development. The idea is that programmers from around the world donating their time will help the application improve faster. In theory this is nice. In practice it rarely ever happens. The vast majority of open source products are never able to assemble a wide-spread team of highly qualified programmers working in consort.
pMachine has grown in revenue by at least 35% a year, each of the six years weāve been in business (most years weāve grown much more than that), enabling us to re-invest right back into our product development and customer support. We just, in fact, hired another full-time developer and weāre scouting another tech support person, thanks to the solid year weāre having. Early next year weāll add another staff member, giving us even more capability.
Now Iām not trying to get into a pissing match with other products, Iām just pointing out something that should be as obvious as the nose on ones face: When you sell software, as we do, you are in fact being paid to write code. When you give it away for free, as open source companies do, you have to find a different way to earn your jack, thus limiting the time you can spend writing code.
Which business model do you think produces more code faster? Which model enables the business to focus on its core mission? Which model places more emphasis on the needs of the end user? Which model generates working capital, enabling the business to expand, hire staff, and seize new opportunities?
Thereās another very important dynamic at play, and again, Iām going to irritate people who are passionate about open source by stating the following: Commercial software companies take better care of their users then open source companies. Why? Because when happy customers correlate directly to your ability to earn a living youāll work harder for them.
Obviously open source companies care about their users too, but the dynamic is different. The amount of responsibility a developer feels toward the end user is not as great when said end user has gotten the app for free. I created an open source app of my own and I simply do not feel the same sense of urgency to provide tech support, bug fixes, and add new features for free as I do toward those who have paid me money.
At pMachine we employ three tech support professionals to provide official support in our forums (our development team provides support too). Support is provided at no charge as an added value of purchasing software from us, and as we grow we will continue to increase our staffing to provide even better coverage.
There is no open source equivalent. The only way to get official support is to pay for it through a support contract. And donāt tell me about how good community support is. Itās not the same. Itās not as consistent, nor does it have the follow through, nor can bugs be addressed officially and immediately fixed when they surface. Every day when bugs are reported we fix them and provide our users with updated code.
Well over 50% of our users are business users and web professionals who use our products with their clients. If your business depends on your site you canāt hope that someone from the community will resolve your issue, you need professional support in a timely manner. As good as community support can be, it doesnāt provide a guarantee of support. We can and do provide a guarantee, thanks to our business model.
Another often cited advantage of open source is that if a developer decides to cease development, someone else can take over, allowing an application to continue on. While this is valid point, in practice, successful applications rarely leave the marketplace. Photoshop has been around for 17 years. Most of the apps I listed above have been around for over 10 years. Weāre about to turn six years old. If an app is good thereās a better then not chance itās going to have a long life-span.
Thereās no implicit guarantee that if an open source app is no longer developed that someone will take over development or that the goals and trajectory of the app will remain consistent. With software, regardless of the distribution model, there is some risk that it might not be available forever. Thatās simply the nature of the beast (heck, itās the nature of every product we use). Iām willing to bet, however, even though I donāt know where Iād find the data, that the longevity of open source products is less then commercial ones since the potential for revenue is so low with open source.
Lest I be branded a heretic let me say that I love many open source apps. Heck, weāve built our entire business upon two of them: PHP and MySQL. But we didnāt choose PHP and MySQL because they were open source, we chose them because they were the de-facto standard for web application development. Had either of these apps not been open source we would have still used them. It isnāt open source that makes PHP and MySQL compelling, itās the fact that they are the best in class and have huge market share.
Iām not an absolutist with regard to licensing. I look for the best applications that meet my needs. In some cases itās open source, in most cases itās not. But my criteria is not based on an ideological panacea, but the more practical desire to fill my toolbox with the best available tools right now. I donāt really care much about the licensing of the products I buy, I care whether they are the best in their genre. And from where Iām sitting, the best are usually commercial apps.
To read the comments for this post check out the page over at web.archive.org.