I would add the following obstacles to open source adoption in IBM i shops:
1. "Who do we call when it breaks?" Commercial support from vendors is a security blanket that some refuse to give up. Those unfamiliar with open source often think "open source" means "no commercial support available." Sometimes that's true. Even I get nervous about the idea of relying on community forums to support mission critical applications. But there are companies who do provide commercial support for many open source applications. Getting the word out about the availability of commercial support for open source might help adoption.
2. "Why bother? My users are doing okay with green screens." Open source adoption is often related to modernization. If you never mention the benefits of modernization to end users, they may never ask to modernize. They may think they are stuck with green screens because that's how the IBM i works. IT folks that want to avoid modernization can create a vicious little circle: never mention modernization so users never ask about it, then act as if user silence about modernization justifies the decision not to modernize. Publicizing the benefits of modernization to IBM i end users--and not just to IT professionals--might help adoption.
Kelly
-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Lee
Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 1:00 PM
To: web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [WEB400] powerEXT - Clarifications from the author
I would argue that the biggest reason open source has never taken off for the i isn't due to the license terms and more a problem of the small size of the audience. If you look at the successful open source projects, they have huge audiences, and only an extremely small percentage of the audience contributes. How many i programers would you have if you took that same tiny percentage of us? Without that critical mass, open source projects tend to fail.
Joe Lee
Jon Paris <jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 01/20/2010 09:10 >>>
I think I now understand why open source has never taken off in the
IBM i community - we can never get past the arguments about what the
(largely unenforceable) license terms mean and actually get down to
coding and sharing.
If it is all as bad as some seem to think then why have SugarCRM, PHP,
MySQL, Linux, and on and on been able to succeed so well?
Jon Paris
www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com
midrange.com
