03.06.06
What does online commerce have to do with free software?
Rick Segal just referenced a post by Russell Beattie, about “Web 2.0″ hype and the proliferation of companies with business plans that seem to have plenty of ideas on how to provide value to the people who visit their website or use their services, but seem to have omitted the part where they get paid.
There’s an interesting contrast between Rick and Russ’s idea of a good business plan and some parts of the free software world, which in many ways ends up being about the free-as-in-free-beer even if that’s not the actual drive. I think the difference is much shallower than it appears — and I think the similarities are quite important, because I suspect that much of the Web 2.0 hype is based on seeing the success of free software but missing the point of why it works.
To start with an immediately handy example, consider the Windows port of the OpenFOAM computational fluid dynamics software that I’m distributing. On the face of it, my doing this seems to completely ignore Russ’s point – the packages for that represent a good week of my own work (above and beyond the hard work of the people who wrote the original program and created the initial version of the port), and here I am giving it away without charging a penny.
And, if you look at it like that, you’ve probably missed the key point.
My business plan, metaphorically speaking, goes like this: I have the knowledge and experience to develop simulation methods for fluid flows and improve the state of the art in that field. People pay me (in the form of a student research assistanceship, at present, and in the form of research positions after I graduate) to improve the state of the art in ways that benefit them. This is straightforward, simple, and quite clear about who pays me and why.
One of the pieces that’s not in that description is the fact that, in order to advance the state of the art, I need good tools. That’s where creating and distributing the port of OpenFOAM comes in. Creating the port is essentially a sunk cost as far as the distribution question is concerned; I did that because I needed it, and because the experience I gained was valuable. Distributing it, once I’ve created it, doesn’t cost much; thus, it doesn’t take much value to make it worth doing.
So, let’s get back to the key point: What is the value I expect from this? I expect to get feedback from people who use it; bug reports and patches. Those improve the tool, and that means that I have a better tool to use in the core value-generation equation. Moreover, I have a better tool for less than it would have cost me to find all the bugs and write the patches myself, and that’s time I can use for working on the problems I’m being paid to research. That’s worth real money, and the conversion process is pretty clear.
This business plan scales up to actual companies, too. OpenCFD, who wrote and distribute OpenFOAM, have a similar business model. People pay them to solve fluid-flow simulation problems, or to develop systems to do the simulations. OpenFOAM is a large part of their toolbox, and the benefits they get from having a large and participatory userbase (and, specifically, a userbase of potential customers) pay for the costs of distributing it.
So what’s my takeaway message from Russ’s post, then? If the value that I get from distributing this software is the feedback that I get from users, then I need to put make it very clear and obvious how they can do that, and effortless for them to do so – because that connection is how I get “paid”. Right now, all I’ve got is a non-obvious and munged email link at the bottom of the page, and that’s not good enough.