Open Source is the worst
Apr 5, 2019Last week I spoke at the CSIRO e-Health consortium. During my presentation, I said:
Open source products are the worst thing in the market. Seth Godin
You might find that to be a shocking claim. I certainly did the first time I heard it (which was from Seth Godin giving a keynote at EclipseCon in about 2007 - I can’t find no link now). But it’s really easy to defend the idea:
How can you sell something that’s worse than free?
A free product is the floor of the market. You can sell something better - but if your product is not better than open source, sooner or later your profitability will disappear:
Your business plan on the right if you’re not better than open source
Of course you might be able to extend your time in freefall with product lock in or regulatory capture… but sooner or later… splat!
So it follows, then, that if you publish open source, you’re not just giving something away for free, you’re changing the market. Everyone selling software has to respond - either improve or die.
Of course, it’s possible that open source is the best on the market as well as the worst. That’s already the case in some markets - very technical ones with low surface areas and big functionality volume (maths and technical tools). On the other hand, It’s not necessary that open source is or even will be the best. I don’t expect that open source will ever be the best for software that has user facing components and provides support for workflows that answer to business needs, which includes must EIS systems, notably EHR systems (though there’s already excellent open source options - e.g. openMRS yay).
But we will see open source replacing infrastructure throughout healthcare.
Which reminds me: any organizations still selling healthcare standards material - your business plan is pretty much in the same place as the picture above. Sooner or later…
p.s. someone at the e-Health Colloquium asked me to post about this, they loved the idea so much. I couldn’t resist the clickbait title…