Comments on: COSS BI: Open Source, Open Core or Openly Naked?

By: In BI, APIs are the Cloud’s OEM « Roman Stanek's Push-Button Thinking

In BI, APIs are the Cloud’s OEM « Roman Stanek's Push-Button Thinking — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:03:50 +0000

[...] decision (the third option – open source BI – is as complex as the build option and as expensive in the long term as the buy option). But now GoodData gives our partners a completely new option [...]

By: Roman Stanek

Roman Stanek — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 04:50:31 +0000

You call it door opener and I call it bait-and-switch. The same thing…

By: Renat Zubairov

Renat Zubairov — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 21:51:19 +0000

A great discussion here. @Roman very impressed by your post. It’s very closely resembles situation in company I’m working in (European open source SOA, we are partnering with Talend, Intalio, Hyperic).
“Selling COSS is no easier than selling any other form of software.” <<< absolutely agree on that, though selling COSS in this place meaning selling "commercial version of OSS software" where OSS software is mostly downgraded to kind-of "demo-version". Obviously such sales model is very heavy-weight and expensive.

In my opinion however the OSS part of COSS is a kind-of door opener for most of the companies.

By: Yves de Montcheuil

Yves de Montcheuil — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:22:29 +0000

@Peter – I don’t believe that Oracle is providing their source code to paying customers. We do.

By: Jerome Pineau

Jerome Pineau — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:40:39 +0000

@Yves – It’s true you have a good ecosystems for connectors I suppose.

When Lucidera went belly up, GoodData offered their customers a safe harbor option and guess what, many of them took us up on it and are still with us to this day No data was lost – But even with proprietary software, people have been known to negotiate source code escrows (specifically when dealing with startups) so I don’t think that’s a huge issue. In any case, the data would still exist in EC2 so it’s not like it disappears overnight. Additionally, in a SFDC integration case, the data lives in Salesforce right? It’s not “lost” overnight simply if a partner happens to expire I believe. In a CSV upload case (direct) the data is not lost either since clearly the user had it onsite – So I don’t believe that’s a significant issue or any more of a risk for them than for any other vendor.

Good discussion – Merci!

Inconvenience? Clearly – show stopper? I think not.

By: Peter Yared

Peter Yared — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:05:34 +0000

@yves what guarantees are you making about the source code for your commercial code in the case you go belly up? just because some people can use your open source program does not change that when people _pay_ they are using proprietary software. those customers are no different than Oracle customers.

By: Yves de Montcheuil

Yves de Montcheuil — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:57:09 +0000

@Jerome: No fork so far – but that’s because we are doing a good job at providing the features the community wants. And for the community, knowing they can do it if they have to is what’s important.

Which contributions did we get? Over 100 connectors, translation of the UI in 10 languages, a vibrant community support system (forum, bugtracker). Not bad I think.

Did I audit my bank’s Cobol code? No. But would I buy stock in a company that boasts that it does not need to be transparent in reporting and accountability? No. (somewhat bogus analogy I think, but you started it).

All right, my turn to throw you a curve ball: should (God forbid) GoodData go belly up, what guarantee do your users have about getting their data back? And about continuing to have access to mission critical systems they are relying on?

By: Jerome Pineau

Jerome Pineau — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:15:26 +0000

@Yves, I am not suggesting people should fill out bogus info. You asked ““Can a user try your solution without paying or leaving contact info?” and the answer is yes as I don’t consider bogus emails “contact info” –

So can we insert and then mine such customers into a sane CRM for later use? Of course not, but people are free to do this if they want. That’s one of the risks an open shop takes – incidentally, I can tell you it’s fairly rare when this happens. People tend to use valid creds because they want the support that comes with a GoodData account anyway.

Additionally, they tend to like and leverage our collaboration features and invite colleagues to their BI projects – So overall there is very little “bogus” info coming in for our signups.

I’ve never understood what “reviewing” some vendor’s source code can possibly bring to the table – unless I’m intellectually curious as a developer well versed in the language/platform being used. As a user, please tell me why I give a hoot about your source code? And as a user, believe me the last thing I want to do is muck with thousands of lines of your code! I want something I can use _now_, not a Rubik’s cube.

How many people have actually forked your product? Where are they and what additions/modifications have they brought? Talend is a highly rich and complex product (I think you would agree) – where is the value of my being able to “see” your source code?

It’s like trusting your money to a bank based on being able to examine their mainframe code. Who cares? – unless you’re a Cobol hacker

By: 451 CAOS Theory » The open core transparency test

451 CAOS Theory » The open core transparency test — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:09:12 +0000

[...] theme was taken up this week by Roman Stanek, founder and CEO of Good Data. Roman’s post had more to do with [...]

By: Yves de Montcheuil

Yves de Montcheuil — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:10:48 +0000

@Chris: “OSS businesses really should be about support”: says who?