Comments on: When the Customers Say "So What?" http://drunkandretired.com/2006/01/31/when-the-customers-say-so-what/ Est. 2000 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:59:16 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Cote' http://drunkandretired.com/2006/01/31/when-the-customers-say-so-what/#comment-2292 Fri, 10 Feb 2006 21:27:00 +0000 http://www.drunkandretired.com/?p=2598#comment-2292 I remember that Greenspun interview (this one, right?). My feel on the open source biz model is that there’s certainly money to be made in it, but perhaps not enough money when compared to commercial software. At least, that’s the perception I feel that most folks have. I’ll have to look into that theory some more and post about it over at the new blog.

I hear you about the refactoring. I’ve always tried to kick up the idea of “boutique programming” (a rephrasing of “one-off programming”): if the costs of programming and support of the code get low enough, maybe it could be a reality. Then you’d just hire a programmer to change the tabs for you. Of course, the platform would need to support that. The real, long-term question is will this make customers (a.) happier with this software, and, (b.) buy more?

]]> By: Chui http://drunkandretired.com/2006/01/31/when-the-customers-say-so-what/#comment-2293 Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:02:29 +0000 http://www.drunkandretired.com/?p=2598#comment-2293 Check out Software as a Service – Lessons Learned over a Windley.com. http://www.windley.com/archives/2006/02/saas_lessons_le.shtm

Phil Greenspun’s interview on IT Conversation was illuminating. He argues that open source companies who had control of the source code can make good profit because companies offer a lot of money to get their patches into the main code base.

Salesforce.com, being a hosted service, could support customization, but it is somewhat harder. For one thing, it’ll mean providing development servers for the customers. In addition, there is probably a tonne of refactoring just to let clients customize their tabs.

]]>