Comments on: Is open sourcing Domino a good idea?

By: stormy

stormy — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 08:01:53 +0000

Kevin,
Your point that the FOSS world likes home grown solutions is right on. I think the preference for home grown solutions grows from a need to feel involved in the project from the beginning. It’s one of the reasons it’s hard to open source an existing project and create a vibrant community. It’s also the reason that I always encourage companies to open source their projects very early in the process, so that other people can weigh in early and help with the design.

By: Kevin Bowling

Kevin Bowling — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:37:06 +0000

I am a big fan of IBM products and would love to seem them open up their portfolio but I don’t see it happening. IBM leverages open source where it makes sense. There isn’t much money in the OS market anymore, so offering Linux services is a given… the same reason it makes sense to sell Windows when you have your own AIX, i and z OS which are niche OSes designed to sell hardware and for existing shops.
I can’t think of anything that open sourcing Solaris really did well for Sun. It’s neat that they did it, and it probably got lots of testing and contribution to the x86 port. This was hardly a good business decision, especially the last part.
For the most part, the FOSS world likes home grown solutions. Take a look at the Firebird database, Solaris again, and the loads of Java apps/containers/etc.
I agree wholeheartedly with you and Carl: simply dumping existing code on the world and expecting magic and free maintenance is not realistic. The amount of vendor kick-starting required grows as a function of code size and complexity.

By: stormy

stormy — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:01:57 +0000

Karl, thanks for the example.
Most companies dump code because they open sourced the product because it was old and they wanted out of the business. To create a vibrant community, it will actually cost them more in the short run.
Sir Marky, I wonder if they made it free for a while to see what the adoption rate was, if that would help them make a more educated decision on whether or not to open source it?

By: Karl Lattimer

Karl Lattimer — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:25:23 +0000

If Hula project is anything to judge by, the open sourcing of the code could be quite easy. What is hard is keeping traction on the project internally and externally.
With hula project, Novell dumped the code for Netmail out there and some development kicked off, the project then died off slowly as interest dwindled.
It could have been just what we needed in the open source world however it died a death…

By: Sir Marky

Sir Marky — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:07:06 +0000

Notes and Domino are excellent products but expensive and often ignored by many IT departments because of the lack of M$ integration. I have always enjoyed using it but I agree, it would take years to create a viable open source version.

By: Rodney

Rodney — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:29:28 +0000

You know my University uses Notes and it is a total piece of junk. I would have a hard time believing that anyone would want to pick it up and run with it.