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gnat on 2002-10-07T21:28:03

Sesame Street turns to open source and free software. Because it's cheap. I'm all for cheap, but I'm starting to develop a sensitivity for shareware and small commercial developers who are finding it hard to "compete" with open source.

The big ways I see small developers able to compete with open source are:

  • usability and user friendliness
  • single source support
  • integration
Is that really all the competitive landscape is reduced to, though?

--Nat

What's really changed?

jordan on 2002-10-07T21:54:43

First off, you can be begware and Open Source. My guess is that begware has similar profitability characteristics to shareware as long as the shareware isn't actually crippleware and stops working after some period of time.

Second, from what I can tell, the small software developers, for the most part, aren't competing in the same spaces as Open Source.

Let's take the example of this Sesame Street story. Any small software/shareware guys doing databases like PostgreSQL? Anybody doing Web Programming environments like PHP? Did they ever?

Small software developers typically do vertical apps for niche markets. Where they don't, like, say, WinZIP, they've always won with useability, as you suggest.

Sure, OSS changes the software landscape, no doubt about it. More opportunity for consulting and integration, an area where the little guys always made a lot of their money anyway.

Are we reading the same article?

samtregar on 2002-10-07T22:12:35

According to the article Seasame Street was using StoryServer and Oracle on Sun hardware. Where is the small developer in that picture?

My idea of a small developer is a shop that specializes in using open source tools to solve problems using custom software. Maybe that's just because I cut my teeth working for one but I can't see much else succeeding on a small scale.

-sam

The Web is not the Company

brian_d_foy on 2002-10-08T00:11:07

Now Sesame Street uses an open source platform for its web server? That's hardly news. The success story for the team who did it is nice, but it does not signal a major shift within CDW. They've been using open source stuff for quite a while the same way that almost every other big company in New York uses open source somehow---they just do not talk about it.

Their web site is only a small part of their company, though. I would be more impressed if they produce an entire hour of television with open source tools, or converted their back office to open source products. That's a challenge. Migrating web stuff to open source is soft pitch :)

On the inevitability of Open Source

ziggy on 2002-10-08T01:49:00

It really isn't that surprising or even all that interesting that Sesame Street is using Open Source to power their website. As brian pointed out, it's a common, easy win. Plus, the CMS space has all of the characteristics of a platform market even though most commercial CMS's are designed, marketed and installed as applications.
I'm all for cheap, but I'm starting to develop a sensitivity for shareware and small commercial developers who are finding it hard to "compete" with open source.
I don't see the relevance between a small scale, common CMS conversion and the larger picture of "competition" between commercial and open source development. First of all, software has two steady states: open and dead (usually dead wins out, even when the source code is open).

Proprietary software is exceedingly good at blazing new trails, delivering niche features, and solving new problems. Open source is exceedingly good at building platforms, and providing common solutions to well-known and interesting problems.

Those sets aren't entirely disjoint, but they don't fully overlap either.