<cite>"In a society and nation like Singapore, where there is an abundance of economic wealth and that is more interested in banking on the big brands, why should they care about saving costs and working with smaller companies?"</cite>
Last week while I was in Singapore, I met someone running a SI company at a community event. And I was caught in an interesting (somehow surprising :p) comment while talking about <a href="http://www.joget.org">Joget Workflow</a> (an open source product) with him.
He couldn't be convinced with open source software, and these are some of the comments he has brought up:
<ol><li>The benefit of cost reduction (in software license) is not a significant selling-point in Singapore's enterprise sector.</li>
<li>Unless the OSS is backed by huge software company like IBM, else he's not convinced with the sustainability of the software's existence. And with this reason, he would rather develop a component, instead of using an existing OSS.</li></ol>
I'm a proponent of "don't reinvent the wheel, do what you are good at". His 2nd point about sustainability of software's existence, is in fact one of the advantages that OSS has, comparing to closed source alternatives.
With comments like the above mentioned, from someone within the enterprise software industry, no wonder OSS doesn't pick up significantly in Singapore.
Authored Comments
<cite>"In a society and nation like Singapore, where there is an abundance of economic wealth and that is more interested in banking on the big brands, why should they care about saving costs and working with smaller companies?"</cite>
Last week while I was in Singapore, I met someone running a SI company at a community event. And I was caught in an interesting (somehow surprising :p) comment while talking about <a href="http://www.joget.org">Joget Workflow</a> (an open source product) with him.
He couldn't be convinced with open source software, and these are some of the comments he has brought up:
<ol><li>The benefit of cost reduction (in software license) is not a significant selling-point in Singapore's enterprise sector.</li>
<li>Unless the OSS is backed by huge software company like IBM, else he's not convinced with the sustainability of the software's existence. And with this reason, he would rather develop a component, instead of using an existing OSS.</li></ol>
I'm a proponent of "don't reinvent the wheel, do what you are good at". His 2nd point about sustainability of software's existence, is in fact one of the advantages that OSS has, comparing to closed source alternatives.
With comments like the above mentioned, from someone within the enterprise software industry, no wonder OSS doesn't pick up significantly in Singapore.
<a href="http://twitter.com/tiensoon">@tiensoon</a>
Yes, I agree with your interpretation of his message.
But that leaves too few FOSS as so-called "less risky investment".