One of the bigger intellectual challenges I’ve faced in
doing this project was whether I should do this as an open source project, or
keep it proprietary.
There is an abundance of both in the marketplace, but in the
limited world of logistics, almost none in the open source arena and of the 4
or 5 I saw, none even approaching what I consider the level of maturity or
design I’m going for.
The irony in this is it actually inspired me to sally forth,
because I saw a void that needed filled… and if I could model myself after
something like SugarCRM, then that would be pretty cool, and it might help fill
in the void of development and cash resources to hire resources.
The thing is, when you look at the example I’m modeling
after, you can see even they are starting to move away somewhat from the open
source model. Recently they announced
that they were taking their code in house, and the open sourced version has
been now forked to SuiteCRM (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SugarCRM
)
The driving thought in my mind has been this… I want to get
this built, and I have three paths before me because I’m relatively cash poor:
·
Just plug away… in my dark little corner of the
world, and work on it until at least the core framework is done. Then post it up on CodePlex (because I’m
going down the .Net Stack), and see what happens while I continue forward on
developing the system.
·
Just plug away +… Same as above, but as things
mature, count the measure of my life by seeing how many willing friends I have
with tech ability to help me pull it together… still open source, but with more
resources… frees me up to start building / marketing a cloud based stack where
we can host the platform for a fee, and grass roots the start up capital.
·
Financing… I’ve actually worked this through a
number of times, and while I can come up with rosy numbers, target markets
(small to medium transporters), I look at the numbers and it’s hard for me to
believe anyone with money would see the returns as large enough to warrant
investment in time and developers to build the framework. The biggest argument against: Don’t really see anyone beating down the door
for this – and it’s relatively boutique market… translation – No big returns…
It’s partly because of the last one that I favor going down
the open source route. Show the bastards
there is a demand for a quality logistics application that can be customized to
their business. Build a business against
the framework by hosting and providing service and consultancy, and try to
leverage the power of large numbers to identify and resolve issues.
At then end of the day though – the bastards may have a
point… it is a boutique arena… and while I’m largely doing this for the fun of
it (sick I know), and to finally purge the concept from my head (it’s been
buzzing for years – time to put up or shut up J
) – my other reasons for doing it is to make an income doing something I’m
passionate about.
I mean – what’s so wrong with wanting to make money? Money has never been the goal, but what money
can do has been. I want to write my Sci
Fi epic, I want to make movies, help other people be creative and inventive and
all of these things require the same thing…
And it’s not good intentions…
It’s money… it’s what enables you to pursue those things
that interest you. It’s that motivational
lubricant that get things moving forward.
So – the real dilemma is:
·
Risk a level of monetization by making it open
source or keep it proprietary and potentially never get it built…
Once I put it that way… the answer, after all these years ,is
simple…
- Finish building the core framework (working services, application interface, and deployment model), and post that out under an open source license…
- Then later – as the business grows and takes off, let someone fork off the last open version of it and bring it in house so we can lock customers into long term recurring service contracts…
Sometimes the douche bag way of doing things is the only way
to go… Thanks SugarCRM J
No comments:
Post a Comment