I've been researching a bug-tracking, source-control and help-desk software package that we're considering purchasing. My experience today was a perfect example of how not to sell software.
The scenario: I wanted to read some documentation about the product we're trying out. Here's what I had to do to accomplish this goal:
The Open Company Test was pretty well received. Check out how JotSpot and XWiki rated themselves. If I have time, I may see how the other wiki-makers stack up. I imagine that they all do reasonably well — they're young companies, run by people who understand the power of collaboration.
But what about other companies: the staid, the entrenched, the enormous, the sclerotic? What about all those vendors who haven't seen the power of collaboration first hand and are too afraid or too bureaucratically immobilized to change?
Well, this post is for them. Instead of focusing on how openness can help us as users, I want to explain why being open is in the interest of a software vendor. I'll use the same criteria that I outlined in the original post, but I will argue from the other perspective.
Found this post by Meg Hourihan, circa 2000. She says:
There are dot-com people and there are web people. Dot-com people work for start-ups injected with large Silicon Valley coin, they have options, they talk options, they dream options. They have IPOs…. Web people can tell you the first site they ever saw, they can tell you the moment they knew: This, This Is It, I Will Do This. And they pour themselves into the web.
I started out a web person. I remember the first website I ever saw (HotWired). I remember the moment I knew I wanted to be part of this new thing (reading this article, two years before I got on the net the first time).
But I got sidetracked in '99. I joined a startup. I got distracted by the business. I was tempted by internet millions. During my entire dot-com career, I never had a personal site. I always told people that I was too busy doing real work, but really I didn't have anything to say.
Blogging has changed all of that. Turns out I really like having a personal site. I've found that I do have something to say — more than I actually have time to write. Participating in the conversation has become important to me. And it raises the stakes on what happens here.
As all the new money rolls in to fund Web 2.0, I hope that we can remember why we started doing this. I hope we can learn from the lessons of recent history. I hope we can see the difference between those who build and those who exploit. And I hope that I stay on the right side of the line this time.
Here's an Open Company example from real life. We upgraded our JIRA installation on Friday. After we did, David noticed that JIRA's notification emails had different From: addresses. (They used to be from the person who made the change, now they appeared to come from JIRA itself.) This was sort of disappointing: we had liked the old way. So what to do? Call customer service? File a bug and wiat to hear back? Bitch and moan? Badmouth Atlassian on the web?
Instead, since Atlassian is an open company, I decided to check things out for myself. I went to the release notes for that version of JIRA to see if the mail behaviour had been changed deliberately. It hadn't. Then, right below the release notes, I saw a list of bugs that had already been found in the new release. (Convenient!) And in that list was the bug about the changed mail addresses. It was already marked as fixed, and scheduled to be released in the very next version. So I got the information, my complaint was answered, and I left happy — all without wasting any of Atlassian's time and money or spending a second on the phone. To me, that's perfect customer service.
Stuffy old-media guy vs. sarcastic new-media guy.
While I whole-heartedly disagree with the premise of the former, I don't think the latter is very well-argued. I feel that the author personalizes far too much and resorts to hyperbole with distressing frequency. Nonetheless, he points out some real holes in the first article and adds some interesting paragraphs at the end regarding organizational models. Worth a read.
Actually, the Slashdot commentary on the article has some excellent points. (I know. I can't believe I just typed that, either. Just be sure to read at Comments +3)
As I mentioned in the last post, SocialText has just lowered it's pricing. I thought I would do a little research and see how the other wiki vendors' pricing compares.
SocialText is at $10/mo/user with their basic pricing.
Confluence, at their least advantageous price point (a twenty-five user license), is $4/mo/user — assuming you have twenty-five users. But that's their cheapest license: if you only have five users in your company instead of twenty-five, then you pay $20/mo/user. And Confluence is host-it-yourself software. So it's not exactly apples to apples.
EditMe charges only $4.95/mo for as many users as you want on their hosting service. They tier pricing based on bandwidth used — but even the most expensive plan is only $24.95/mo.
Xwiki is opensource, so you can use it for free on your own servers. They offer a hosting service: free with advertising or €2.4/mo/user at the least advantageous per-user pricing. (I'm not totally sure I'm interpreting this correctly. Ludovic, please correct me if I'm wrong.)
SeedWiki offers service priced between $0.00 and $19.95 a month. The pricing is differentiated by features, rather than by number of users.
Project Forum has a "regular license," based on workspaces, and an "enterprise license," based on number of users. Their enterprise licensing starts at $0.56/user/mo. This is also host-it-yourself software.
JotSpot is still in beta, so we don't know what their pricing model is going to be yet.
Is that it? Are there any commercial wiki vendors that I'm missing?
When was the last time you saw this happen? SocialText lowers pricing by two thirds. Pretty impressive. This strikes me as a much more realistic pricing model that the previous $30/mo/user. As valuable as I think Wikis are to the organization, that seemed excessive given the competition. And I think $10/month/user will make it a much easier sell to those people for whom wikis are a new concept, and those who haven't actually seen one in action yet.
But I think it's pretty likely that SocialText will come up with a "Pro" version eventually. Remember what Uncle Joel taught us about pricing software products and the demand curve. [Just be sure to read all his caveats at the end before you go off and do something silly.]
I had another thought about the Open Company Test. There are many individual cases where it may not be appropriate to disclose certain information (e.g., security-sensitive bugs, or private customer data in a support request). But the best way to handle those cases is to publish a clear policy, in advance, detailing under what circumstances information will be kept private. For example, take a look at the Mozilla Group's security bugs policy. Having such a policy gives the company flexibility to be private when it may be required. And being upfront about the policy reinforces the trust between the company and its users.
After writing that last post damning Apple's lack of transparency, I thought it might be a good idea to actually come of with a list of questions with which we might identify an open software company. I don't think it's necessary that a company meet all of these criteria, but the more the better.
Jonathan Nolen 