Continuing from the previous weeks (read Part I and Part II here), Hacker Noon delves deeper into why companies fail to impress Technologists. Consistently!
When it comes to Open Source Software or OSS, a couple of names come to the minds of the millennial, namely - Android, CyanogenMOD, and maybe an Open Office. Those a little older will be quick to call out the name of their favourite Linux distro.
Don't Worry. We're covering all of them in this newsletter.
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With that out of the way, let’s get back to how NOT to sell to Technologists.
✳️ When You're Open Source in Name Only
If you've used an Android device anytime in the past 10 years, you've heard of the CyanogenMOD. It was the open source alternative to the bloatware that we have as Android OSes. When the company shutdown, it refused to release the code over to the community leaving millions of CyanogenOS users stuck in limbo.
Did that earn the CyanogenMOD Management the goodwill of the Open Source Community? NO!
Thankfully though, the community came up with a repackaged and salvaged code as the LineageOS.
✳️ Disguising Closed Source In Open Source
Quick Question. Is Android Open Source?
According to the Android website, it is.
But, if you look into the components such as the Phone Dialer, the Camera, and such, Google, in its devices uses closed-source solutions for these while letting the older open-source versions die a natural death. This is the reason why the AOSP movement started to take root and has emerged as a healthy alternative to the Google's own solution. The key takeaway here is to never under-estimate the open source enthusiasts. We've persisted for a better part of the last few decades and will continue to do so.
It is the businesses that need to align to our requirements and not the other way round.
Thankfully We have Linux, Right?
Wrong. Linux Development is Glacial at best
✳️ Enterprise Editions Hogging Your Attention
Just like Bitcoin mining (or is it vice-versa?), larger code commits are more commonly performed by corporations that also double-up as service/support vendors. This means that the makes-business-sense-to-develop Enterprise Editions will take precedence over the vanilla or community versions. As the dichotomy increases, we might see a day when viruses that affect the vanilla version but not the Enterprise Editions will become even more common.
While community developers are taking on bigger roles and are more globally spread out, they suffer from the idiosyncrasies that plague most distributed teams - standups and asynchronous meetings.
There was once a proprietary (gasp) office software called StarOffice. It was ported into an open-source solution named Open Office which was later bought out by Sun Microsystems who developed it for a while and then started slowing things down. They even licensed the code out to IBM under a proprietary contract.
To make a long story short, forks started cropping up left right and centre as can be best depicted from the image below:
With this, it's a Wrap on the How NOT To Sell To Technologists
Which Series Should We Start Next? Send in Your Suggestions as a reply to this email and we will make that happen.
Before you leave, check out some of the awesome stories on what happens when the power of open source solutions is leveraged by the community.
