Oleg touched on a subject that seemed to strike at the hart – he questioned the value and opportunity for PLM to be “Open Sourced“. After re reading the post and all the comments I was struck by the fact that NO ONE asked the question or re phrased the question relative to the PLM companies and current solutions just becoming more open. All the obvious items were discussed, it could reduce sales cost (which I doubt), anyone could contribute, solution cost would be less and the ROI would be better. What I see missing in all this is the simple fact that that the customer would get more value out of current solutions if they were actaully open! I know everyone will say the current tools are open, but they would be answering from a technology point of view not an agreement point of view. Certainly if you are allowed to get a “license” then you could develop something or customize the current PLM tools. But the process to become licensed could not be an more CLOSED if you put a committee to work with this as their objective. A big part of the value of open source has to do with the fact that I do not need to ask you to modify or customize your code. I am OPEN to do it, when I want and to the extent that I want! The simple idea of allowing people access to your APIs will have a major impact on PLM success. Therefore I think the question needs to be re stated as “Is there a value in PLM being open” and drop the idea that PLM needs to be open source. PLM can not be open sourced! The PLM market is just to small for an open source approach… there are not armies of people who will care to contribute…
But imagine if PLM did become open, it would align with newest PLM marketing platform Social Media, or in the case of PTC Social Product Development. If something is social is it open? In order to be social does the solution need to be open? What do people think – does a solution need to be open to be social? Another aspect of social and something Oleg has written about multiple times is the fact that social solutions or WEB 2.0 solutions are mashable. So again can a solution be considered social if it cannot be mashed?
To think about this from another aspect look at the social media solutions that have become market worthy! If you take a the cream of these off the top and look at the twinkle we call twitter, facebook and myspace you see that none of these are open source, but they are all OPEN! And each has an open source competitive version that struggles to be successful… I would conclude that open source is not the right question and that by dropping source from the question and focusing on open you are then on the right track.
Chris, I agree entirely about ‘openess’ rather than ‘open source’.
I’ve pasted below a post I made on Oleg’s site a few months ago:
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I’m finding this discussion of new technologies, mashups etc very interesting.
I suspect that the vibrancy of the small developer community is important in fostering innovation in a space.
Look at Facebook, Twitter or Google Maps. It’s very easy for a couple of programmers to have an idea, get access to the APIs for these platforms, knock up a prototype and see whether people like it. If it gets traction and can find a business model (or funding) it gets developed more and grows, otherwise it dies off naturally.
This can be done with minimal amounts of effort and cash initially. It can be done out of curiosity or community spirit. It can be done long before you’re even sure it’s a good idea – business or otherwise.
Compare this with the PLM space. It’s not easy to access APIs. You may need to become a partner – even though you’re not sure you’ve got a good idea yet. Getting hold of data to work on is probably even harder. Finding people that are curious to try and give feedback can be tricky.
As a small software company, we could probably knock up a Facebook app with a few evening’s work. I don’t think we could do the same with Enovia or TeamCenter.
I don’t know what a solution would be. Perhaps this is just what happens when you’re dealing with commercially sensitive data and proprietary platforms.
Andy
I think what it comes down to is the point you make about “good idea”. If you have a good idea it is likely your application will never be approved. Or if your idea undermines the value of the platform even if it does provide value for the customer then your application will never get approved. I expect that as PLM becomes more socially enabled it will also need to become more open. If it does not then it will not grow.
When you say sensitive date what are you referring to? If you are referring to the desing files then I would say this has nothing to do with keeping the PLM vendors from being open. Don’t forget CAD models are attached to emails all day, every day and sent around the world…
I meant that you’ll often need real ‘live’ data to try stuff on. The APIs are only one half of a mashup – there also needs to be data to mash.
In the situation where you have a good idea, but aren’t sure whether it’ll work, where do you go for realistic data? A company aren’t likely to let you loose on their sensitive PLM data.
AH yes this is a real issue especially for something like what you guys are doing. I know what Apriori did was to partner with JD to prove out the technology. I think this is the only way you can really do this until somethign like Google 3D warehouse is really running.
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100% agree with the need for open. There would be alot more innovation in processes and products within Manufacuring if the engineering software tools were open and encouraged broader contribution of ideas.
I think the comment that “The PLM market is just too small for an open source approach… there are not armies of people who will care to contribute” is mistaken though. We need to get past the Myth that open source is about thousands of programmers. Honestly, can you think any innovative software application with thousands of developers (proprietary or open)? Once a team gets past a dozen or so developers, it is no longer nimble or effective.
the most exciting open source projects (JBOSS, Sugar, Alfresco, Pentaho) all had small teams working on the core application. Any development done by the larger community is at the fringe (language packs, add-ons, documentation). The community contributions are valuable, but not nearly as critical to the core application as just their feedback and ideas.
The only thing a market needs to support an open source project is a large community of opinionated users with a vested interest in changing the status quo. The PLM end-users are clearly tired of the proprietary, closed applications stranglehold they are living with.
Do you really believe that the PLM community cannot put together at least one group of a dozen smart developers, with a passion for PLM, who can develop and support an open and scalable PLM application?
Google 3D warehouse? How about 3dvia.com?
Peter I agree it does not take armies. It would be interesting to see if PLM could pull together a small group and do something interesting. How would you see these people coming together and where would they come from. It certainly has not been done yet… I understand you are open and open sourced but how many contributions have been made to the core from the community? What if we tried a small project, what if we got the community to Vuuch enable your solution?
Sorry Garth I went with the standard and forgot my roots…
Hi Chris,
I’m just catching up on some blog posts. There are definitely contributions from customers. I did a quick browse of the community solutions http://www.aras.com/communityProjects/ and found the Meeting Manager solution that was contributed by Freudenberg, and the CMII Affected Items wizard that was contributed by Delphi. I know there are others. Peter will have to comment on what contributions made it to the core code.
Best Regards
Tom
i found you by tie-in from the Directory Listing Book from Ash.. Enjoyably to be familiar with your blog ^.^