Über die Verpflichtung beim Software Kauf

Hier ist ein Artikel von Matt Asay. Jeder der ihn bzw. seinen Werdegang (s.u. nach dem Artikel) kennt wird sich über die Aussage nicht wundern, aber natürlich hat er im Prinzip recht.

Hat sich schon irgendwer jemals bewusst überlegt warum man für ein Stück Business SW mehr hinlegen muss als für ein Auto/Einfamilienhaus/Schloss/Kleinstadt/den Staat Island? Ohne Funktionsgarantien, ja sogar ohne JEGLICHE Garantie? Warum bei dem Preis Bugs "normal" sind? Weil jede Software Bugs hat? Weil jedes Auto Bugs hat? Oder jedes Flugzeug?

Blöde Vergleiche, klar. Aber doch auch irgendwie richtig, finden Sie nicht?

Natürlich kostet die Produktion von SW etwas. Und natürlich kann Sie nicht ausschließlich (aber doch zu einem großen Teil *gg*) in Billiglohnländern hergestellt werden. Nur: wo außer in der Software Industrie kann man heute noch eine 20 Jahre alte Ware als "neu" in's Fenster stellen und dem Käufer nicht nur den Zugriff sondern auch das Lesen der Rezeptur verweigern?

Würde nämlich der Code mancher so genannter Bestseller veröffentlicht werden, so würden Sie sehen und sich wundern wann und mit welchen Mitteln der geschrieben wurde. Der ganze Apparat heute dient zum Großteil NICHT der Innovation wie uns versucht wird glauben zu machen. Es wird vielmehr grenzenlos Geld in's Marketing geworfen um das Werkl am Laufen zu halten und mit dem größeren Teil des Rests werden nur Löcher ('Bugs') gestopft (und meist damit woanders wieder aufgerissen). Nur ein sehr kleiner Teil geht tatsächlich in die Entwicklung neuer Funktionen oder Programme.

Wurden bei Ihrer Business Software schon jemals neue Funktionen im Rahmen Ihres sog. "Wartungsvertrages" implementiert? Oder mussten Sie Dinge die Sie benötigt haben ohnehin separat bezahlen? Nur um sie dann in der nächsten Release als "Innovation" wieder zu finden?

Früh am Montag Morgen...

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The Open Source Mandates Are Coming 

Jeffrey Hammond, principal analyst at Forrester, just Twittered something that is about to hit the traditional software world like a ton of bricks:

Just got off the phone with a client who's been mandated to use [open-source software] because licensing costs are killing them.

Call it the beginning of the end, if you like, but it's coming. The last few decades of software have been an aberration, built upon the historical accident that is digitization. Or, rather, not the accident of digitization, but rather that for a relatively brief period of time, we've made believe that digital goods can be treated like physical property. Companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP have made billions in the process.

Guess what? Party's over. Ultimately, every software business will transition to a maintenance business, where software is charged on a subscription basis and looks suspiciously like services revenue, because buyers now realize that software products that can be developed and distributed cheaply should also be sold cheaply.

In fact, the transition to maintenance revenue is already well under way. Oracle, a paragon of the traditional software industry, already makes most of its revenue through maintenance. Its peers are much the same.

The next phase in the transition comes as IT buyers start to question the value of the maintenance contracts they sign with software vendors. Oh, wait. That phase has already begun, as reflected in the recent uproar over Oracle's and SAP's attempts to raise maintenance pricing without actually delivering much value for the base maintenance cost or the price uplift.

Next phase? We're already there, too. It's called open source, and it forces software vendors to provide ongoing value to justify CIOs spending money with them. Red Hat has led this shift, but it's a movement that is accelerating as open source permeates all areas of the software stack, from applications like Openbravo (ERP) and MindTouch (collaboration) to core infrastructure like Lucid Imagination (search) and MySQL (database).

In the past few weeks I've had a range of Fortune 500 companies choose Alfresco to replace Documentum, Oracle (Stellent), IBM FileNet, Vignette, and more. In those same weeks I've heard from peers at other open-source companies that they've been actively replacing HP, IBM, Tibco, Oracle, etc. in customer deployments, too.

In fact, the only enterprise software vendor that has remained somewhat impervious from open-source encroachment is Microsoft, as it has been lowering prices and improving ease-of-use in its technology for some time. But Microsoft, too, will have to face the open-source music, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has noted recently.

As enterprises get squeezed by the recession, they're going to squeeze their vendors for cost savings. At some point, those vendors' cost structures and business models won't support the squeeze, and the business will go to open-source vendors.

It's already under way.

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Von der Alfresco Webseite. Alfresco ist im Prinzip eine Wiedergeburt von documentum als Open Source - in beiden Fällen scheint wohl John Newton die treibende Kraftzu sein. Mehr dazu in einem anderen Artikel.

Matt Asay has been involved with open source since 1998, and is one of the industry's leading open source business strategists. Asay currently manages sales and business development activities in the Americas for Alfresco, the open source leader in Enterprise Content Management.

Prior to Alfresco, Asay co-founded Novell®'s Linux Business Office in 2002 and was an early agitator and architect for the company's shift to open source. In 2003 Asay founded the Open Source Business Conference, the industry's premier open source strategy event, and has served as an Entreprenuer-in-Residence for Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, focusing on open source investment opportunities. Before Novell, Asay was General Manager at Lineo®, an embedded Linux software startup, where he ran Lineo's Residential Gateway business.

Asay earned his Juris Doctorate degree at Stanford Law School, spending two of his three years studying software licensing and innovation, and specifically the GNU General Public License, under Professor Larry Lessig. He also holds Masters and Bachelors degrees from the University of Kent (Canterbury, UK) and Brigham Young University, respectively.