Years ago, my wife was out on a shopping trip. She called me excitedly to tell me about a blonde shih-tzu puppy she found and just had to have. As she talked, I thought about all the things that this puppy would need to thrive. Regular walks, food, and love are paramount on the list. I told her to use her best judgement rather than flat out saying “no”. Which is also how I came to be a dog owner. Today, I’ve learned there is a lot more to puppies (and dogs) than walks and feeding. There is puppy-proofing your house. And cleaning up after accidents. And teaching the kids that puppies should be treated gently.

An article from Martin Glassborow last week made me start thinking about our puppy again. Scott McNealy is famous for having told the community that “Open Source is free like a puppy.” back in 2005. While this was a dig at the community in regards to the investment that open source takes, I think Scott was right on the mark. I also think Martin’s recent article illustrates some of the issues that management and stakeholders don’t see with comunity projects.

Open software today takes care and feeding. Only instead of a single OS on a server in the back of the data center, it’s all about new networking paradigms (OpenFlow) or cloud platform plays (OpenStack). This means there are many more moving parts. Engineers and programmers get it. But go to the stakeholders and try to explain what that means. The decision makers love the price of open software. They are ambivalent to the benefits to the community. However, the cost of open projects is usually much higher than the price. People have to invest to see benefits.

TNSTAAFL

At the recent SolidFire Summit, two cloud providers were talking about their software. One was hooked in to the OpenStack community. He talked about having an entire team dedicating to pulling nightly builds and validating them. They hacked their own improvements and pushed them back upstream for the good of the community. He seemed love what he was talking about. The provider next to him was just a little bit larger. When asked what his platform was he answered “CloudStack”. When I asked why, he didn’t hesitate. “They have support options. I can have them fix all my issues.”

Open projects appeal to the hobbiest in all of us. It’s exciting to build something from the ground up. It’s a labor of love in many cases. Labors of love don’t work well for some enterprises though. And that’s the part that most decision makers need to know. Support for this awesome new thing may not alwasy be immediate or complete. To bring this back to the puppy metaphor, you have to have patience as your puppy grows up and learns not to chew on slippers.

The reward for all this attention? A loving pet in the case of the puppy. In the case of open software, you have a workable framework all your own that is customized to your needs and very much a part of your DNA. Supported by your staff and hopefull loved as much or more than any other solution. Just like dog owners that look forward to walking the dog or playing catch at the dog part, your IT organization should look forward to the new and exciting challenges that can be solved with the investment of time.

Tom’s Take

Nothing is free. You either pay for it with money or with time. Free puppies require the latter, just as free software projects do. If the stakeholders in the company look at it as an investment of time and energy then you have the right frame of mind from the outset. If everything isn’t clear up front, you will find yourself needing to defend all the time you’ve spent on your no-cost project. Hopefully your stakeholders are dog people so they understand that the payoff isn’t in the price, but the experience.