Does the open-source label still matter?

Last week we reported [1] that Cheryl McKinnon [2], left "proprietary" vendor Open Text [3] and joined "open source" vendor Nuxeo [4]. Nuxeo brought Cheryl on board to be their Chief Marketing Officer in order to take Nuxeo to a new level in the market place. That much is obvious since that is what marketing is all about, but it got me thinking how different life might be for Cheryl in the "open source" world, and after talking to her, I'm not entirely sure it will be that much different.

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier, who is openSUSE Community Manager [5] says one major difference he sees for the open source product, especially when dealing with a company like Nuxeo, is the flexibility it gives customers. "Working with a corporate sponsored open source project can offer the best of both worlds, as you can work to shape the product with the paid developers and meet user needs," he says.

Developer community vs. in-house development

Perhaps the biggest difference between the open source world of Nuxeo and the proprietary world of Open Text is that Nuxeo uses a community of developers to help build their content management products, while Open Text relies mostly on an in-house development team to build theirs. Both companies still rely on user communities to act as ambassadors, but McKinnon pointed out that right now, that balance has shifted toward the developer side and she plans to help build the user side too.

Brockmeier adds that it's hard work nurturing these communities. "The basic tools of marketing don't change--but the dynamics of working with an open source project are a lot different. You do need to take the developers into account, and you can't count on magical open source pixie dust to drive contributions or downloads--there's still work involved. Usually a lot," he says.

Open source v. proprietary licensing

Of course, the license is a big difference here because what makes open source "open" is that the customer can access and use the code base and bend it to fit the needs of the organization, rather than the other way around. This is not insignificant because it can mean a great deal to an enterprise to have this ability to make the product work for them. The flip side of that is that you really have to understand the open source process, especially the upgrade path says Brockmeier.

"I have seen projects where developers modify something (like a CMS) and do it in a way that they can't continue on the upgrade path of the upstream project. This is bad because when security updates come down the pike, they're left behind or have to abandon the customization," Brockmeier explains.

Marketing is marketing

Brockmeier says that in the end, the open source aspect of a product is at best only a minor selling point, and that the product has to be has good or better, from a feature perspective, than the proprietary competitors. As an example he points to PostgreSQL [6], which he says, "may not technically do everything that Oracle does--but it does what it does very well, and seems to meet the needs of most organizations." The majority of the market may not need the remaining features that Oracle tacks on.

Therefore, when McKinnon builds her team and develops her strategies, I'm guessing they won't be altogether that different from the ones she used in her previous positions at proprietary vendors. That's because when you come down to it, beyond the ability to get at the code (and I'm not minimizing that, believe me), the product is the product is the product. McKinnon will ultimately be judged by her superiors on how successfully she markets the product.

I think it's easy to lose sight of that when we get into debates about whether to go with open source or proprietary (or whatever you want to call them). These labels in the end have been rendered meaningless, because whether your company produces a proprietary software package or an open one, you still need customers. You still need to convince them that you have a good product and when you get down to that level, it's an even playing field. The rest is up to McKinnon. - Ron [7]