One of the things I’ve found very interesting about being involved in open source, and indeed business for that matter, is customer expectations.
Just because you give something away does not mean that you or your offering will be judged more kindly as a consequence. It does not mean that there will be a lower expectation of your support either.
Take this exchange on the Hyperic support forum. HyperMike plainly has an expectation that Hyperic offer technical support via their forum for free. Something you only guarantee if you buy the enterprise version of Hyperc HQ.
I’m not saying that either HyperMike or Hyperic are wrong, just that you have to be very careful to set expectations of precisely what will be delivered and what will not. If you are not careful, you could very easily end up with a tarnished reputation even though you haven’t failed to deliver anything you said you would. Perhaps the problem is assuming that your users will understand what the deal with open source tools is without you setting it out in detail for them.
The implicit deal on open source is usually: we give you the code and maybe some binaries for installing it with some rudimentary documentation and you figure it from there yourself. If things go wrong you can ask for help on our support forum where other people in the same situation might be able to help you out. Don’t ask us unless you want to pony up some dough.
Of course, not everybody knows what the implicit deal is… which is where the problems arise.
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There was a delightful blog post on this that I read many months ago and can’t seem to find, but it points out that success can destroy an open source project.
For example: imagine, suddenly, a bunch of people are eager to try out Project X. They download it, install it, and have lots of questions. So they bombard the mailing lists. Now, due to the volunteer nature of most projects, there aren’t enough people around to answer all the questions. Plus with the sudden influx of people, the chance that one or two support vampires will appear is larger. Now all of these new and eager people think that the Project’s maintainers are aloof or uncaring and they decided not to use it, or worse yet, badmouth the Project. The Project gets a bad reputation which results in a lot fewer people trying it out.
Vicious cycle.
@Tarus – Do you think the problem is worse when there is a commercial company behind the product? Do people expect more from what is obviously a commercial company rather than a loose affiliation of people creating an open source project?
Jack, you are spot on.
It is all about managing expectations.
In general, my experience is you get better “support” from well run FOSS projects but it requires, more often than not, some patience and a willingness to work *with* the community. Just asking for an answer/solution and expecting a simple yes or no doesn’t really work.
In the proprietary “world” you tend to get what you are given and then told to wait for the next release if something isn’t right. It’s a simpler relationship but less flexible and rewarding in the longer term.
Proprietary vendors want one thing; profit. FOSS vendors want a relationship.
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