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.
Question
1: "How important is it that the software has the
features you need?" Mean Answer: 6.59.
Why
respondents rate "the features you need" as highly
appealing seems quite obvious. In fact, the question seemed so
obvious to us in planning the survey we considered not even asking
it. Upon further reflection we decided to include it because we
thought Open Source aficionados might find the need for features
relatively less important as access to source can facilitate
the addition of those features that might be missing. But this was
not the case. Respondents clearly suggest that having the right
features is the number 1 thing they demand in Open Source software.
What’s
the implication for vendors of Open Source software? You better be
competitive on the feature front. This reflects our experience over
the past five years. We’ve consistently moved up the food
chain as we’ve proven our core features do the basics at least
as well as the proprietary offerings. Corporate customers may cut
you a little slack because you’re Open Source, but not much.
And the more mission critical the use the less they can afford to
give you the benefit of the doubt.
Question
2: How attractive is the availability of quality commercial
support? Mean Answer: 5.94.
The
attractiveness of commercial support as demonstrated by respondents’
answers to this question is also confirmed by our experience selling
an Open Source CRM. You’re not seriously considered for larger
engagements if there’s any doubt in your ability to be around
for the long haul to support the code. Serious users do not consider
support and maintenance a luxury. They’re a necessity. In
our case, we’ve written roughly 800,000 lines of code in the
past 5 years. Moreover, our code functions intimately with several
hundred thousand lines of 3rd party code. Few IT managers
want to manage this complexity on their own. They have too many
other dragons to slay.
Question
3: How attractive is the right to use the code for internal
purposes however you want? Mean Answer: 5.47.
As a general
rule respondents valued the unencumbered use of software for internal
purposes quite high. However, the average (mean) doesn’t tell
the whole story. A number of respondents cared deeply about this
right, others cared to a considerable degree, and many cared only
moderately. Moreover, we couldn’t find much of a rhyme or
reason as to why they responded as they did given their comments.
Except in one type of case. In those instances where respondents
were involved in efforts to extend Centric CRM (our software) in some
fundamental or important way, they invariably responded with a "6"
or "7". Which makes sense. Control is paramount in
these instances.
Question
4: How attractive is the right to define the terms of the
license for the improvements you might make Mean Answer: 5.28.
Many
of the respondents in our survey were from organizations not
in the business of selling IT products and services. Considering
this, the relative attractiveness of control in how improvements are
licensed surprised us. It seems somewhat counter-intuitive to value
a right so much if your core business makes the need for it mostly
moot. After a bit of chin pulling on this we concluded that perhaps
there’s a simple and very American dynamic (given all of the
respondents were US citizens) at play here.
A cultural
bias in the US is "I can do with my property what I want".
The software version of this goes something like "If I create
some really cool code it’s my right to determine how it’s
to be licensed." As a rule this is a pretty sound position.
And we believe this sentiment is reflected in the responses to this
question. But we’d ask: How does this sentiment jibe with the
GPL? The answer is it doesn’t. If you want the right to
license what you’ve built and in your own unique way – as
"free as in speech" – don’t extend it from
GPL code. Other OSI licenses like BSD and LGPL can work fine, but
not the GPL. As the preamble to the GPL says, "to protect your
rights we need to make restrictions". One of those is that
modifications must themselves be GPL’d. We point this out not
to bad mouth the GPL. In fact, we believe it’s a revolutionary
(and needed) tool and ideal for certain situations and classes of
software. Rather, we point this out because many blindly, and with
little regard to what customers and/or partners want, try to make it
fit all situations. It doesn’t and it can’t. We find it
great at the lower levels of the stack. We find it
counter-productive in many other domains.
Question
5: How attractive is low price (and/or being "free")?
Mean Answer: 4.81.
This was also
a bit of a surprise to us. Not only because of the relatively low
mean, but because this question had the greatest skew. It was one of
only two questions where each possible response got at least one
vote. Answers ranged from "1" all the way to "7".
It’s
obvious why low price is attractive when considering Open Source
software. On the other hand, those that rated "low price"
as less appealing shared their thinking in comments like: "You
get what you pay for – reasonable pricing is better than free"
(senior IT executive from a large not-for-profit foundation) and
"free is not necessary, but we do want prices that are fair and
where we can get a clear ROI" (e-business executive from a
large media company).
What are the implications of price in the battle
for market share? Considered in conjunction with Questions 1 and 2
above (i.e., regarding the appeal of features and support) we think
the implications are clear. Price may be a differentiator but it
will not be the determinant in Open Source software’s battle to
penetrate the enterprise. Features and support are at least as
important, if not more so, than price. Institutional users are
simply not willing to sacrifice capabilities and maintainability for
saving a few dollars. To be taken seriously Open Source applications
must compete to a considerable degree along those dimensions
traditionally dominated by proprietary vendors – features and
support. We believe this will be a challenge for those applications
that get forked too much by competing distributors. They may not be
able to sustain an economic base large enough to create compelling
features and build a brand.
Question
6: How attractive is the availability of source code?
Mean Answer: 4.75.
It was
initially disheartening to see the average response to this question
as low at it was. Does this mean source code simply isn’t that
important to many? We believe the answer to that question is no.
More likely we did a poor job of asking the right question.
Had we to do
the survey over again we’d likely turn this question into two
or more that touch on different aspects of the subject. For
instance, we might ask something like: "Is the availability of
source code attractive to you given your propensity to extend or
modify software?" If asked this way we believe the average
response would be significantly lower. Why? Few users tinker with
source and so availability is of marginal value along that dimension.
However, we’d also ask a second question that might go
something like: "Is the availability of source code attractive
to you in general business terms". The responses to this would
probably be much higher. While few users actually expect or want to
modify source code, we believe most appreciate the "freedom"
it can guarantee. As one respondent said: "we want the
assurance of being able to support an application if the vendor
leaves."
Question
7: How attractive is the right to redistribute the code to
others externally (i.e. commercially)? Mean Answer: 3.91
The overall
low attractiveness of the right to redistribute isn’t
surprising given most of those we surveyed are with organizations
whose core business has nothing to do with software. As one
succinctly put it, "I don’t aspire to being a reseller".
Thus, they neither expect to modify code nor will they ever have a
need to redistribute it. The few respondents who took the survey
that were from IT products and services businesses felt very
differently. They greatly value the ability to redistribute code and
they want to do so on terms of their choosing – as expressed in
Question 4. But again, for most organizations the right to
redistribute code is of very low perceived value.
Summary
Conclusions:
As a vendor
of Open Source software the conclusions we reach can be boiled down
to two simple truths.
First, to be
considered in the game of enterprise-class software there are antes
that must be met. They’re called features and support. Like
in poker, if you can’t "ante up" you won’t
get in the game. Price may be a powerful differentiator but by
itself is not enough. Open Source vendors must make the commitment
and find the means to create robust products that stack up along
these two critical dimensions.
And second,
customers are neither dumb nor blind. They know a lack of features
when they see it. They’re also not blind to believing that
somehow the Open Source label will make missing things like features
miraculously appear. At times it seems our community is lulled into
believing that the Open Source process by itself magically creates
code. And great code at that. It doesn’t work that way.
Robust features, great UI, documentation etc., all take time, talent,
close collaboration, and resources. For Open Source vendors to
succeed they need to find just the right mix of attributes to get
customers excited and then keep them that way. This is not easy.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
“At times it seems our community is lulled into believing that the Open Source process by itself magically creates code.”
Thats somthing Ive noticed as well. Theres just not as much initiative from the OSS community as there used to be. Lots of users and few participators.
There’s just not as much initiative from the OSS community as there used to be. Lots of users and few participators.
I guess the user community is growing faster than the developer’s community, which seems quite logical, given the fact Open Source gets more momentum last years and can appeals more to non-tech/dev users.
Open source has created a process which productivity has taken everyone by surprise, even its supporters.
It’s ability to respond to user’s demand has come from the multiple inputs the process allows, but its not guaranteed.
It’s not surprising that the projects most relevant to IT corporations and academia has received most contributions. I doubt the same would happen in the fashion industry or generally, user community with little professional programming experience. Participating to most projects to date involves significant skills not only in programming but also a good knowledge of software engineering processes, like version control, patching, merging, and all that, on challenging languages (C,C++ mainly). The entry barrier is quite high.
The second wave of programmers (non pros) will be helped by languages like Python or environments like Gambas, just like Access and VB has created a lot of programmers within people who would never have touched C or C++.
haha,
when someone says he needs a nice guy for a tool,
he gets some dumb answers, like RTFM.
Many apps are created by people who only develop it for their own needs, and when you ask for a feature or soemthing you get more dumb answers.
Many people in the Linux world are not able to communicate,
i meet many and most are aggresiv freaks, not able to share their knowleage.
I have nothing against OSS and Linux, use it alot.
Well,
I can see all sorts of problems with the “CPL” license, that will not endear itself to the open source community.
If you want the kinds of code production and revolutionary contributions to source code that open source provides, you don’t turn around and kill the ability for source code to be distributed by wiping out GPL compatibility.
Hello? The most successful source code projects of all time share one thing in common. What do you think that is?
Apache, Mozilla, Linux…even Tomcat that runs this application share something in common.
GPL compatibility, redistribution of source code.
A few years ago I watched commercial companies deride the use of Mozilla as a has been web browser with no real future and that it couldn’t possibly compete with Microsoft. The entire act of Netscape releasing the source code to the community under the GPL and various other forms of GPL compatible liceses has proved them wrong.
To put it lightly, Mozilla is the operating “kernel” of the web now and is as such, is an impressive feet of distributed engineering, cooperation and defiance with respect to ANY commercial venture in the software world.
Thank God too, because if I had to put up with the commercial crap thats out there I call “Browsers”, all my users machines would be infected with viruses from looking at pretty pictures.
So just a comment, about this “open source” license. It is no such thing and it will dramatically disappoint.
I won’t touch it and neither will my customers.
-gc
I feel the open source community has to apply the same introspection and feedback, to its self and its processes as it enables in its development model. So good article and thanks for sharing it with the community.
I would be very interested to know peoples (esp decission makers) opinion on what I consider to be at the heart of open source’s benifits.
How would you rate the benefits of being able to contribute customisations or features you add to a project back to a project? Considering that first you don’t have to continue to maintain them, you can continue to you your current verion. But if you do, you share the costs of maintaining those features with the community and also share the benifites of others extension or improvements to these features?
Actually I’d place Apache/Tomcat and others as the “kernel” of the web and Mozilla the user interface to that system
But I get your point.
The only people that copletely bash OSS are the people that have something to lose. Those projects and companies who cannot adapt and go the way of the dodo, never to be seen again. Mozilla has come so far that Microsofts own people use it and it’s dirvitives (as seen in recent articles) in stead of IE. Why? because through OSS, a _choice_ remains. The choice the allows the public to have a piece of software that is not only free and open, but safer the the alternatives.
Now to those people who scoff at the idea that OSS is safer and more secure, think of this. If thousands, if not millions of people have access to the code, isn’t it statistically probable that at least of few of those people might be skilled at looking at code and finding security issues before they arise? If that’s the case then OSS is already on par if not ahead of the game in that respect. After all, the reality is that individuals looking at the code don’t have to find all the problems, just one or two each, and just like writing and contributing to the codebase, they can contribute to the security of an project. Even if they are dead wrong, the attention something gets could be near to a real problems.
The comment above about the dodo has real meaning. OSS survives by darwinian (?) law. That is to say if it doesn’t suck, it will flourish. If it sucks, then either it gets fixed ot tossed into the proverbial bit bucket. The bottom line…. More eyes, better code.
Corey
“This survey is not, as noted above, statistically significant nor was it our intent to create one that was.”
So you have a survey which fits _your_ particular business model. Then you write an adver^H^H^H^H^H article that suppports your business’s view on open source software. This is purely an opinion piece and should be labeled as such. Or if you want to advertise, buy a ad banner.
How is your last paragraph summary a valid conclusion of open source (other than your business model)? Any statistics 101 student knows that to come to conclusions for a poor sample does not represent the population. With a few key edits I can the argument flip the other way around.
“And second, customers are neither dumb nor blind. They know a lack of features when they see it. They’re also not blind to believing that somehow the closed source label from companies like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, or PeopleSoft will make missing things like features miraculously appear. At times it seems our community is lulled into believing that the closed source process by itself magically creates code. And great code at that. It doesn’t work that way. Robust features, great UI, documentation etc., all take time, talent, close collaboration, and resources. For closed vendors to succeed they need to find just the right mix of attributes to get customers excited and then keep them that way. This is not easy.”
I found the following paragraph a little bit confusing:
Rather, we point this out because many blindly, and with little regard to what customers and/or partners want, try to make [the GPL] fit all situations. It doesn’t and it can’t. We find it great at the lower levels of the stack. We find it counter-productive in many other domains.
GPL software in the lower levels means that all linking apps must be GPL as well, no? Isn’t this contrary to the opinion you stated before? Or did you mean LGPL?
Additionally, the GPL is usually seen to ‘protect’ applications like yours more (against potential competitors) then more-liberal licenses. Is this just a myth?
However, nice article, and thanks for sharing.
“”At times it seems our community is lulled into believing that the Open Source process by itself magically creates code.”
Thats somthing Ive noticed as well. Theres just not as much initiative from the OSS community as there used to be. Lots of users and few participators.”
I get the impression most of the really vocal supporters of having “the code” actually can’t read a line, much less write one. Some just think it’s fashionable to claim they are involved.
Others support open source by defending it until hell freezes over, regularly reading the works of Stallman, and assisting friends in totally hosing their laptop by installing some half-baked distro.
The remainder can write a few hundred diatribes against every bit of non-gpl software and postng it in every single forum having nothing to do with open source. That must be worth at least two bits.
Support truely comes from a lot of non-involved sources.
“haha,
when someone says he needs a nice guy for a tool,
he gets some dumb answers, like RTFM.”
Rubbish. This is a stereotype. I dare you to read the GNOME or KDE mailing lists. Where are the tons of dumb RTFM answers you talked about? Go to the Inkscape mailing list. Where are the flames?
It all depends on the people. Some people are nice and helpful, others are not. Such is LIFE. There are also lots of RTFM’ers in the Windows community, so don’t act like they don’t exist. Something tells me you’re ignorant to reality.
And frankly, how would YOU response if you see 300 of these kinds of messages every day? http://kore.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5605
It would be helpful if the first paragraph of that article explained what the acronym “CRM” means.
Thanks for posting it!
Just as you would consider expanding on question 6, I think question 7 needs the same treatment;
Question 7: How attractive is the right to redistribute the code to others externally (i.e. commercially)?
Could be written as;
* How important is the right to redistribute the software as you wish?
* Within the company or to affiliated companies?
* Outside the company as a commercial product?
* Outside the company as a non-commercial service?
Since you’re offering commercial support, maybe a follow on question about having associates (they sell or provide the software — even if initially — you support it) might be helpful.
Rubbish. This is a stereotype. I dare you to read the GNOME or KDE mailing lists. Where are the tons of dumb RTFM answers you talked about? Go to the Inkscape mailing list. Where are the flames?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Agnome.org+rtfm&…
CRM = customer relations management
like siebel etc
And frankly, how would YOU response if you see 300 of these kinds of messages every day?
Head…hurts…
Make it go away. PLEEEEEAAAAASE.
It seems you only searched for the word “RTFM” and completely ignored the context of those posts. Let’s analyze some of the search results.
Result 1: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-app-devel-list/2001-April/msg000…
That is indeed an example of an RTFM post. But if you click “Thread Index”, you’ll see that that post is a response to an email with this subject: “UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE…” (you get the idea). The thread starter is a spammer.
How would you feel if a “UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE” email land in your mailbox? Wouldn’t you get at least a little annoyed.
Besides, if you look at the message’s BODY, you’ll see that the poster tells him the email address to where UNSUBSCRIBE instructions must be send to.
Result 2:
Link to the mailing list index. This does not count.
Result 3: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-perl-list/2001-August/msg00032.h…
The poster himself said he wanted to RTFM. Nobody told him to RTFM.
Result 4: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-pilot-list/2003-September/msg0…
The original poster himself used “RTFM worthy question” as subject. Nobody told him to RTFM.
Result 5:
Link to a reply. Doesn’t count.
Result 6:
Another link to the mailing list index of message #1. Doesn’t count.
Result 7:
Yet another reply to message #4. Doesn’t count.
Result 8:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-app-devel-list/1999-May/msg00050…
The original poster used “rtfm” as subject. Nobody told him to RTFM.
Result 9:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-list/1998-March/msg00076.html
The original poster said that he RTFM’ed (read the manual). Nobody told him to RTFM.
Result 10:
Link to a reply. Doesn’t count.
Now, it’s your turn. I’ve yet to hear any good and valid arguments from people like you, instead of endless flames and stereotypes.
Hey can anybody tell me why when there is an Open Source article to show/comment you put a GNU instead of the Open Source logo ?
see you.
We believe this will be a challenge for those applications that get forked too much by competing distributors. They may not be able to sustain an economic base large enough to create compelling features and build a brand.
Bingo! DING! DING! DING!
Finally an article supporting what myself and others have been saying for a long time. Corporations are looking for the best ROI the package deal; Support, features, and reliablity hence the reason the company i currently work for uses RedHat Linux on Dell servers and not <INSERT (your favortite distro which you think is so much better then the others on a white box PC) HERE>
If the Linux “Community” are so concerned about the success of Linux as a whole. then they would make changes to support the IT industry customers.
From their site: “The Centric Public License gives you permission to modify the Centric CRM source code. Unlike some Open Source licenses, you also have the right to license your modifications under any license of your choosing and distribute accordingly. You can not, however re-distribute Centric CRM or its source code. Redistribution of Centric CRM is expressly prohibited under the Centric Public License.”
While they list customers opinion of free distribution as the lowest ‘attractive’ option, it may be prudent to point out this is almost entirely the principle that GNU was started on. Work being released open source just happens to be a quality necessary for trully free distribution. If we had some way of automatically reverse engineering binaries into usable source code it wouldn’t matter if it were released open source. It’d still matter if we could freely redistribute the original work. The GPL is meant to _keep_ software and its modifications free to distribute by anyone. This is more than just open source, it’s a body of work that is and always will be free to view, modify, and redistribute. This philosophy spreads better because free software spreads to anyone who wants it, while open source software tends to be stopped dead in its tracks when it reaches proprietary, closed implementations.
It isn’t a coincidence that these people who say they have created a more open license by allowing other peoples modifications to be redistributed in whatever license they want, have made the redistribution of their software illegal. Let’s reform question number 7, since your software can’t be freely redistributed anyway, let’s actually ask the question about the modifications instead:
Would you choose modifications licensed under GPL, CPL, BSD, .. over proprietary closed source with an EULA? What if you had no choice because your company made the decision for you? Does the release of modifications under any license really matter to you if you think free redistribution rights don’t? Did you know that you can redistribute your work _only_ to your organization, partners, and customers (NDA if you want) under the GPL? You don’t need to release the source code for work unless you distribute the binary outside your company or to someone (still outside your company) who actually wants the source code and has been given the binary legally. The person/company you distribute it to can of course release the work to other individuals, only by doing so would they possibly break an NDA and their loyalty to you.
But look where we are again, we’re talking about companies who’s only reason for wanting the ability to release modifications under a different license would be to further restrict the use of their modifications. This is why GNU uses the phrase free software instead of open source. Free distribution is the key to free software. It’s the entire basis for my work since it’s the best concept I have seen as far as getting more and more people to use (and modify) the work.
If CentricCRM was a modification of a CPL’d work that would be released without the rights to distribute modifications to CentricCRM (or CentricCRM itself) under any license, would it still fit within your ideals? Would someone choose CentricCRM over “OpenCRM” if they had the same features, only OpenCRM was covered by CPL and CentricCRM by an EULA that said no distribution of modified work?
I think all of this just serves to complicate things even more. It’s the old rehash of the BSD vs GPL way of thinking. One is always free (as in open to modification, redistribution, and use) (BSD) while the other is always free both before and after distribution (GPL). CentricCRM, because of CPL, doesn’t mimmic or fall in between either of these licenses.
A reply to the offtopic support comments:
The reason RTFM does get said quite often is because the software support is being provided for free. RTFM gets said quite often about Windows support in free windows channels/community boards as well. I doubt Redhat, Suse, IBM, or Microsoft has ever said RTFM to a customer paying for support before.
Anyway, usually most of the people offering the support have little to no relation to the original development team. If the development team does provide support it is typically in the form of “the fucking” manual that everyone gets told to read. This is the same exact process in closed source software as well. A customer must contact a representative of the software, usually costing them money. This is a good enough deterrent usually in that they know if they read the manual carefully enough and it does explain their issue, they’ll avoid unnecessary charges. In free software (free as in no cost) communities some people expect their support to be free too. Which is fine since sometimes there are people willing to offer it. Just don’t expect it to follow some public policy companies tend to enforce (and not all companies do).
According to bash.org, the best way to deal with RTFMs is:
“So if you’re starting out Linux, I advise you to use the same method as I did to get help. Start the sentence with “Linux is gay because it can’t do XXX like Windows can”. You will have PhDs running to tell you how to solve your problems.”
That allways works
raver31 wrote:
CRM = customer relations management
like siebel etc
Thanks for the reply raver, but unfortunately, that only tells me what the letters stand for, not what it means. Never heard of siebel.
First of all, thanks to those of you who took the time to respond to our article and share your thoughts. Any reasoned discussion helps us all even when we disagree.
To clarify a few points. First, we believe the GPL is a superior license for certain classes of software. And we define superior based on only one criteria — its success in facilitating world class software. By that standard, and that standard alone, the GPL is superior in some cases. From our point of view, those areas are operating systems, servers, databases, etc. It’s superior in our mind because of the quality of the products that have sprouted up under its auspices. Results matter, not what we say, you say, or any of the other luminiaries on the subject say. If the code and product are great and customers/users are satisfied, that’s the final arbiter — IOHO.
By that same standard, the GPL has proven inadequate within the domain (CRM) that we operate. There are no compelling GPL’d CRMs. For whatever reasons — and we have our opinions and hypotheses that we won’t bore you with here — the license hasn’t worked. We believe it’s because forking destroys (a) the economic base before a great application can be delivered and (b) the economic incentive to continue developing great features. But again, that’s an opinion. The reality is that the GPL can not be considered a superior licensing methodology for CRMs if the standard by which you judge it (at least today) is the quality of the products licensed under it. That’s what end customers/users care about. And by that definition, it has failed.
Lastly, we have relationships with companies (Open Source & proprietary) that re-distribute our code and us theirs. They modify Centric CRM, add to it, etc. We have also accepted extensive improvements into CentricCRM that was either commissioned by a corporate user or created by them. In all cases, however we form relationships that are economically sound for them and for us so we can continue making a better product for the end customer. Our goal is not to make sure everybody can re-distribute our code for the sake of dogma or for their own economic gain. The latter is often what some want though they cloak their argument in disingenuous forms.
I hope the above doesn’t get moderated (and thus this message since it refers to it) because even though it is profane and simple it goes to show that this is actually honest hostility some people have against GNU and the GPL. I think it is unfounded and completely off the mark since GNU is the exact opposite of a communist state. GNU promotes individual freedom of distribution (and the extra right to eternal distribution) instead of government (or business monopoly) controlled distribution. Richard and I may both be atheists, but I don’t think that has any bad connotations.. it’s merely unpopular in the still mostly religious world we live. It’s also not a goat head, it’s a gnu head.
I agree with the X Windows comment
While I agree with you, Joseph, that the above should not get moderated in the sense of letting everyone have a voice, rantings (held up as free speech) do nothing to further meaningful discussion. They instead cause polarization and reasonable people to leave otherwise useful forums. Like getting together with very distant relatives who scream at one another — it gets tiring. So while in theory I don’t need to read it, I need to read it to know that I don’t need to do so. Ugh. I sound like Kerry.
How does CentricCRM compare to SugarCRM ?
Thank you to the few people that are discussing CRM software and this application. Has anyone else tried Centric? I currently use a php based app that runs on Apache called Leopard CRM to keep all my customer details.
Thank you for the explanation about licenses and stack. However, I don’t agree since, IMHO, you mix institutional agreements with the license issue.
Most Open Source projects have developers distributed worldwide, without a lawful institution like a company protecting cooperation. The means to communicate are insufficient, and important facilitates surrounding a commercial business are also missing. In such cases, the GPL is a very good license to find additional development help. It doesn’t matter to which level of the stack the software belongs, IMHO.
TYPO3, for example, is GPL and it manages to compete successfully with other proprietary Content Managment systems. And although everybody could fork TYPO3, nobody would be really successful in doing so since the value of the project lies in the institutional setting they build: their well-known name, their network of local companies doing service, and their developement network.
Sugar CRM is a good example to compare to us (CentricCRM) or with some of the other OS ones mentioned above.
IMHO, it’s an immature product, not many features, but with the capital they’ve raised they’ll presumably make headway. Check them out for yourself — http://www.sugarcrm.com.
I think the more interesting issue as it relates to the comments above is their licensing approach and how it drives their business model. They are not GPL’d.
Read their FAQ’s at http://www.sugarcrm.com/home/Software_License_FAQ/92/
They’re using a variant of the Mozilla license and thus can /are creating a dual license strategy. Their “OS” version will have a certain feature set, their “Pro” version others. Overtime they’ll charge more and more for the “Pro” and in effect it will become proprietary. This strategy is not possible under the GPL — at least as we interpret the GPL. In sum, we presume that like us they couldn’t find a way to create an economic engine to drive new feature investment under the GPL. Their approach is not unreasonable to us. In the end, however they’ll be competing mostly on features, support, and price with customers. Not the license.
I notice there is another CRM app called OpenCRX (http://www.opencrx.org/) that appears to be realised under a BSD style license. The makes of the app compare it on a feature by feature basis with
Siebel, salesforce.com, MS CRM, sugar.crm and Compiere.
(http://www.opencrx.org/tour-features.htm)
They do not compare it with Centric. To be honest I am quite impressed by the numbers of succesfull and current implementations even though I have yet to try it for myself.
Apart from Leopard CRM (which I use everyday) I have briefly played around with Compiere but haven’t even touched any of the others. I would love to try out more CRM apps including Centrix.
When I said ”
To be honest I am quite impressed by the numbers of succesfull and current implementations even though I have yet to try it for myself. ”
I was talking about Centric.
A definition of CRM can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management
In the end, however they’ll be competing mostly on features, support, and price with customers. Not the license.
I agree. Wish you doing well with your company and product. 🙂