We're a small, Open Source software vendor that's been offering a variant of an Open Source CRM since 2000. We have some large corporate clients with significant installations and hundreds and hundreds of users with smaller ones. Our product is called
Centric CRM though until recently it was known as Dark Horse CRM.Background:
In an effort to stay as close to the CRM and Open Source communities as we can we regularly run surveys; there are so many myths circulating with respect to both Open Source and CRM that we hope to de-mystify a few of them with data. Below are the results of a small survey we recently undertook. The results - statistically insignificant - may not surprise you. The conclusions we reach, may. Nonetheless, we share the results and our conclusions in the belief that more discussions based on data lead to a healthier Open Source community.
The survey:
We asked 87 individuals their opinion of the attractiveness of different attributes of Open Source software. Those we surveyed ranged from users of Centric CRM to non-users, from senior IT executives to front line managers, and from those with deep knowledge of Open Source to others with only a casual understanding.
This survey is not, as noted above, statistically significant nor was it our intent to create one that was. We run surveys in an on-going attempt to understand the industry for our internal use and not to sell to others - the latter purpose requires a higher degree of discipline than we're probably capable of. Nonetheless, we believe the results reflect what we've anecdotally heard over many years and over thousands of conversations on the subject and would be inline if a more statistically significant survey were done.
Table 1 reflects the questions we asked, explains the scale (1 to 7) upon which the answers were based, and shows the average (mean) of respondents' answers to each question. The list has been ordered to reflect those attributes of Open Source software respondents found most attractive to those considered least attractive. Thus, "features you need" was deemed the most important attribute of Open Source software while the right to redistribute code "externally" was, on average, the least attractive attribute.
Table 1:
| Please rate on a scale from 1 to 7 the attractiveness to you of the following 7 attributes of Open Source software. 1 means it has very low appeal to you, 7 means it has very high appeal to you. |
Average (mean) Answer |
| 1. How important is it that the software has the features you need? | 6.59 |
| 2. How attractive is the availability of quality commercial support? | 5.94 |
| 3. How attractive is the right to use the code for internal purposes however you want? | 5.47 |
| 4. How attractive is the right to define the terms of the license for the improvements you might make? | 5.28 |
| 5. How attractive is low price (and/or being "free")? | 4.81 |
| 6. How attractive is the availability of source code? | 4.75 |
| 7. How attractive is the right to redistribute the code to others externally (i.e. commercially)? | 3.91 |
Comments & Observations:
We spent a little time noodling over what this data means. Following is a bit of what we came up with.
- "Survey, Page 1/3"
- "Survey, Page 2/3"
- "Survey, Page 3/3"
