OK: You win.

This site is being converted to DotNetNuke

Just before Christmas 2002 I was laid off, and being a software developer, I decided to develop something, with the aim of selling it and maybe starting my own company.

Having spent the past couple of years developing and supporting marketing sites, I decided to develop the most totally awesome content management engine, capable of running hundreds of websites each running thousands of pages.

I spent the best part of six months working on the engine, Breezer, and was almost at the point of having a real product, when the guys at DotNetNuke put their engine on SourceForge. This, for the uninitiated, is the Open Source repository, where groups of volunteers build software and give it away.

It is the most altruistic of concepts, and I must confess it baffled me. It goes without saying that these folk have real jobs in the Software business, which pay their mortgages, and the simple fact was that I would never be able to compete with an army of good developers, working, unpaid, on a similar product.

For years I have been convinced that there is no business model for Open Source - that is: you spend time and money making something and then give it away - but yesterday it came to me - there IS a workable, if dodgy, model.

My brother-in-law gave up his job as a software tester and now runs a BetterWare franchise - distributing household goods catalogues, taking orders for the products and delivering them the next day. He is a decent, hardworking and honest individual, but I suddenly saw the parallel. If he can recruit others to work for him, he gets a percentage of their sales. Eventually, through hard graft, with enough recruits, he can simply take their commission, and do less of the grunt work himself. Similarly, if his recruits find others to work for them, they get a cut, and so on down the chain. This of course only works if you are one of the first in the game - the founder of the company gets a huge amount of commission, the next tier slightly less and so on. Eventually there won't be anyone left to recruit...

The Open Source game works in much the same way. The founders, Linus Torvalds, De Souza etc, make a good whack out of lecturing on the virtues of working for nothing.

Of course, in the real world, only the top tier can make a living from this model, the rest of us can work all hours for a crust - so whats new?

Many folk have been convinced that you can give software away and "make a living out of selling support".

I even saw a site saying that the computer games business should adopt the Open Source model - that is: you ( Electronic Arts ) spend $25 Million developing Harry Potter 4, you give it away (you pay for the postage / ftp bandwidth), and you pay your 500+ developers by charging the punters $2.50 a minute for telephone support. Hey - some of those developers are actually Open Source advocates, maybe you can get them to work for nothing!

Open Source means there will never be another Microsoft, another Oracle, another EA, when the small developer cannot build (or buy) a small product, and make enough on the sales to build the business. These days, if you have a good idea, like Innovartis did with DBGhost, someone will copy it and give it away before you pay your first annual tax bill.

I'm not saying I approve of every action of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Larry Probst, only that I could not convince my Bank that I should be allowed to live in my house wihout repaying the mortgage.

So, I'm resigned to it now, I'm not going to try and compete. The software development business is being exported to cheaper countries anyway (I'm about to be replaced in my current job - it took me 9 months to find that) so I'll just install DotNetNuke and take advantage of the efforts of those well-meaning souls who have contributed to a great product. And I mean that - it is a GREAT product. Well done guys - you are good developers, just a little shaky on the business front.

This is a temporary page while I transfer the existing content.