[Web4lib] RE: Open source support models

Tue Jul 15 14:50:04 EDT 2008

Hi David,

It's not quite that simple. Paying for two things does not necessarily
cost more than paying for one - it depends on the price, the payment
terms, and what you get for your money.

Also, there are other business models:

Subscription for software or service is one which is fairly popular in
the commercial software (i.e. where you pay for a license) world. In
this model the support and license are bundled into a
monthly/quarterly/yearly fee. This can definitely spread the cost pain. 

An "initial pain" point in any model (commercial or OSS) is the payment
for services to get things up and running (a major component of
Caitlin's original and revised post). This assumes you want paid for
service and support as you have to run a service of your own and want
some guarantee (formal SLA or just informal) of time to get help. As a
supplier of commercial software we also make use of OSS and we often end
up fixing and contributing to the code pool because we cannot afford to
wait for the community to fix the problem we have found.

Development services costs often occur as an up-front payment and their
existence is independent of the nature of the software license. In fact
it is easily conceivable that OSS services are more expensive as the
full cost plus profit for the supporting company have to come from those
services. Commercial software suppliers often include an amount of
support time in the "license" fee. Even more if it is a subscription
where support is often "free", and so are software upgrades - admittedly
as long as the subscription is kept current.

There are all sorts of variants and the actual, absolute, cost can only
be determined by asking (and often bargaining with) the various
suppliers of suitable systems and services. And, of course, discounts
and special incentives make your price often very different from the
person sitting next to you.

To really mix the models, throw hosted services in. These do not have
the explicit costs for time or money spent on setting up machines and
operating systems and the like, but still include the "administrative"
time for the customer. They are much easier to get running but,
generally, cost more. However economies of scale can make the extra cost
marginal. Another model to consider...

Peter

Dr Peter Noerr
CTO, MuseGlobal, Inc.

+1 415 896 6873 (office)
+1 415 793 6547 (mobile)
www.museglobal.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-
> bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Walker, David
> Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 11:03 AM
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: RE: [Web4lib] RE: Open source support models
> 
> Hi Caitlin,
> 
> 
> 
> > If there is no clear benefit in terms
> > of money (since instead you end up
> > paying for support anyway, or losing
> > that money in terms of time) what is
> > the advantage of choosing Open Source
> > over commercial software?
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe I can clarify a little here.
> 
> 
> 
> With commercial software, you end-up paying for two things: (1) a
> license just so you can use the software in the first place, and (2)
> support.
> 
> 
> 
> With open source software, you only need pay for the support (if you
> choose to have support).  The software is free.
> 
> 
> 
> So there is a significant up-front cost savings, since you don't have
> to buy a license.  Once you calculate, too, that you will receive
> future enhancements and modules for the software for free, the savings
> of open source over time become even more significant.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --Dave
> 
> ==================
> David Walker
> Library Web Services Manager
> California State University
> http://xerxes.calstate.edu
> ________________________________________
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org]
> On Behalf Of Caitlin Nelson [cnelson at hawaii.edu]
> Sent: Monday, July 14, 2008 6:34 PM
> To: Thomas Dowling; web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: [Web4lib] RE: Open source support models
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Sorry if my emails seem naive or unstructured - I never meant to make
a
> point-by-point argument or say anything stunningly original, I was
just
> voicing a thought on a recent experience...  If you're still
interested
> here
> are some more thoughts:
> 
> Thomas Dowling wrote:
> > I don't understand: are you saying there are commercial alternatives
> > where the cost of software plus the cost of support is affordable in
> > your situation, but free software plus Liblime support is not
> affordable?
> 
> Just to clarify: no, I wasn't saying that - I was just complaining :)
> Of
> course everything costs money (or time, or both) in the end.  It might
> make
> a difference, though, if you have IT staff who are more familiar with
> one or
> the other - our in-house IT staff does not support Linux at all.
> 
> Marcie Pierson wrote:
> >Perhaps what she is saying is that, larger systems often have a
person
> or
> entire staff
> >dedicated to IT/ILS, whether they use open source or not. Small
> systems
> usually have to
> >have one person become the IT/ILS guru on their own, and while open
> source
> may have
> >online groups that are happy to assist with troubleshooting and such,
> that
> library person still
> >has to do a lot of self-training. Regardless of cost/no cost, on top
> of
> normal library duties, a
> >staff member working in a small library has to also become an expert
> in
> some piece(s) of
> >software without the benefit of support from another department (or
> person).
> 
> This is more along the lines of what I was intending to say, thanks
> Marcie!
> 
> 
> Essentially here's the situation: our current "ILS" is a couple of
> wicker
> baskets, some quarter-sheets of paper (check-out slips), and an aging
> Excel
> list of inventory.  Our annual budgets is around $3500 (in a good
> year).
> ANY system plus support is going to cost us money - probably more than
> we
> can afford.  We have no IT person for the library, though we do have
> someone
> for the entire school; I am the only librarian.  What I was hoping was
> that
> an Open Source ILS would work for us, given that there was a chance I
> could
> install it and get it running myself for free (in terms of just
money).
> 
> What I ended up figuring out was that the time investment and learning
> curve
> for installation and setup are huge obstacles to achieving this goal.
> Like
> I said in my previous post: I'm decent enough with computers and I
like
> learning how to do new kinds of work.  But I was not familiar enough
> with
> command-line work, Linux environment, PERL, etc to be able to
> troubleshoot
> or do anything that wasn't already written in the installation guide.
> I
> also got fed up with installation guides and error messages that said
> something like "Have your systems administrator check this" - I AM the
> systems administrator in this case!
> 
> On the plus side, the VMWare images were incredibly helpful (thanks
> Dan)
> both for Koha and Evergreen, and a great starting place for us.  It
> takes
> off the burden of having to do a complete install from scratch and I
> can
> jump straight in to working with the actual ILS.  And, having gone
> through
> the work of installing from scratch, I am now a more capable
> administrator
> (becoming more so by the hour, I hope).
> 
> I thought I and my library would be a perfect combination for using an
> Open
> Source ILS, but in the end I was surprised at how unaccessible it
> turned out
> to be.  Maybe it was only a surprise to me (I should have read this
> list
> more carefully)!  But it did leave me thinking about who exactly is
> supposed
> to be able to use this kind of software.  Some final thoughts for you
> all:
> 
> - Who is the market for Open Source ILSs like Koha or Evergreen?
> - If there is no clear benefit in terms of money (since instead you
end
> up
> paying for support anyway, or losing that money in terms of time) what
> is
> the advantage of choosing Open Source over commercial software?
> - What solution is there for small libraries who cannot afford support
> for
> either Open Source or commerial systems?
> - It seems like there is a fairly steep tech gap between moving from a
> double-click installation process on Windows to the installation
> process for
> something like Koha on Linux - is there a way to overcome this or is
it
> something people will just have to "deal with"?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Caitlin Nelson
> Interim Librarian
> TransPacific Hawaii College
> Honolulu, HI
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