Will European rules impact open source business models?

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Download is not the issue - its the tender process

It makes no sense to have a policy that accepts software that is 100% proprietary or 100% open source and nothing in between.

Any commercial open source vendor can get around the download issue by having an evaluation version of the enterprise version. Pentaho has this, so does Alfresco. I speak from experience when I say that the download is not the problem, its the tender process.

According to the European Union procurement directives any paid services related to software need to go through their tender processes. Whether you have an enterprise edition like Alfresco, or a pure services model, like Funambol, you are in the same situation.

The problem is that the tender process is slow and involved. In many cases it involves filling out huge RFPs and flying people in to sell and 'hand-hold'.

The cost of jumping through these hoops is built into license fee of proprietary software. As a consumer you are not only paying for the cost of selling to you, you are also paying for a percentage of the cost of failed sales.

Open source and commercial open source have no license fee, so there is nowhere to bury this cost. Governments, if they want a lower cost, need to change their behavior.

Posted by: jimmyed2000   Posted on: 05/18/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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