Open Source: It's Just a License?

I've just read an interesting article over at CMS Watch by one of their Analysts, Adriaan Bloem, entitled Open Source: It's Just a License.

In it Adriaan discusses TCO costs for Open Source vs. Commercial and mentions that there are a lot of gray areas between Open Source and Closed Source systems. In the end he sums it up pretty well with a great piece of advice:

"There's only one thing you can generalize: open source is a specific kind of license. And discussions about which license is better are rather academic. What you'd want to decide on is what your software should do, if and how you want to customize it, and how easy it is to get support when you need it. That means doing your homework, and finding out the real story: you'll certainly want to know what's behind the facade. And that's something that applies to software under any license."

I'd like to actually take this even further, as there is a point further up the article in which he talks about costs with some example numbers:

"Get out your calculator and tell me this: what's more expensive over the course of three years. Software that's $30K up front, with a 15% annual maintenance and support fee; or software that's "free," but with $15K a year in "gold support"? Or, if you're planning on doing it yourself, one FTE?"

You could pretty much pick any numbers out of the air to make this argument and you could make it go either way pretty easily. However it misses a pretty big point for Open Source, and that is control.

Those costs above are a pretty small part of the equation if we are talking about Enterprise-level content management systems. And indeed its a point Adriaan makes:

"It's just an example, but you get the point -- it's very hard to do an enterprise implementation cheap, whichever way you turn it."

Anyone who has done any kind of CMS deployment in a large organisation know that the CMS they procure 'out of the box' is only going to be about 20% of the way towards their end goal. The rest is going to be customisation towards their specific business requirements, processes, branding, etc; and working out what they actually want to do. The key point is how easily does the CMS that you procure allow you to customise it to get the remaining 80% done?

With Open Source you get the choice of how you want to spend your budget. Make no mistake, you are still going to have to spend some money (see above, you have 80% still to do) but you get the flexibility to spend it how you want and when you want. You could start off with installing and evaluating an Open Source CMS with very little initial outlay. Then, as you build the system up and start to implement your requirements, you have the choice of how to do it: you can do it with internal development resources or you can hire in external help (or contract the development out). You can do it with a mix of these at different points in your project as you deem fit.

Furthermore with Community Open Source (as opposed to 'Commercial Open Source' in which, usually, a single vendor produces a system then open sources it) you have a choice of development partner. This is a pretty critical point. You can choose if you want a small local one-man-band with lower costs, or a large consulting company with full-on project management and offices around the globe. You get to pick what fits best in with your organisation... and even better... you are not locked in to them! Should for whatever reason you need to move development partner, then you can pick another one. Each of these companies will (should) have equal access to the core development of the system you have chosen and be able to make changes and fixes on your behalf. With closed source systems you might have a choice of VAR/Integrator/Developer, but in most cases these companies will still be one step removed from the software and have to go via the original software vendor to make any changes.

You also have lower risk with Community Open Source systems. There is no one central company that could go bust or be bought out by another vendor and end your CMS. Just look at the number of vendors acquiring other vendors in the commercial CMS space (there has been quite a flurry recently). These acquisitions are often to bolster an area of the portfolio that the vendor is weak in, but as a side effect they often acquire pieces that are superfluous to their current offerings and may be dropped. And when they are you are in trouble. The same risk is also present with 'Commercial Open Source' too if Alfresco, Hippo or Magnolia went bust then whilst their code might be Open Source, you have just lost the single dominant force in the development and may also have lost support, mailing lists, bug trackers, etc with them too.

So back to Adriaan's advice: "What you'd want to decide on is what your software should do, if and how you want to customize it, and how easy it is to get support when you need it." Do your homework, look at the different systems out there and make an informed choice. Just make sure that whatever system you choose gives you the flexibility and security that you know that you will be able to make the changes you need not only now, but three years down the line when you inevitably procure that new sparkly CRM/ERP/HR system. ;)