Sunday, April 29, 2007
Open source code!
Should we make Wildcat! open source?
I often wonder if we should go in this direction. I think for new start ups it might work, not sure for established companies with branded products and a large loyal customer base. Going open source can hurt your customer base who have stuck with a company expecting high quality product support and stability.
Does this imply products based on Open Source isn't stable or of high quality?
No, not really. But if you go by many examples in the market place of open source based products, you really never know what versions or trunks or custom changes are being used when customers generally discuss the brand - such as Wildcat!, the brand.
But I do also see where there might be some open source advantages for Wildcat!, especially on the hosting components that help create all the various hosting clients, such as the web server, ftp server, telnet server, etc.
If you have any comments about this, please do chime in. And no, please don't say you would like to see us do open source because others are doing it. In fact, I believe you are seeing those companies or people who started as open source, and now established with 3-5 years in the market, are starting to go more proprietary then you think - just look at the new GPL 3.0 licensing debates.
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1 comment:
If you want to restore the wildcat!/WIN Server name as a platform I think it's valid to consider an open source approach, especially with the market being saturated with so many quality free alternatives; apache, php, mysql, to name a few, as well as other items freely available on the web even with GPL 3.0 licenses. It only takes a few moments for a person in their basement to setup a decently featured web and telnet server with spare parts from old computers.
Although, if santronics were to seriously consider this I would encourage a more community based model such as what Drupal has been doing with their cms platform for years.
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