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Re^2: On Code Ownershipby Tanktalus (Canon) |
on Jun 18, 2005 at 17:07 UTC ( [id://468011]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
I work for what some may call a large company who is not only a large outsourcee, but we also write "off-the-shelf" software - stuff that you may not get that much say in how it works. It's the latter part, an off-the-shelf portion of the company, where I work, so I'll focus my rebuttal from that perspective. We have many customers. Some large (multi-million USD transactions), some small (a few thousand USD transactions). And many of these - both small and large - ask for specific features. Generally speaking, as we have well over 600 people working on this product (probably about half of them developers, the other half trying and failing miserably to keep developers from tripping over each other), few requests come in where the customer is fully funding the development effort, nevermind giving us a rate of return on investment that would be acceptable to the corporation as a whole. Most new features go in at a loss, in the hopes that it not only means a long-term relationship with that customer, but that the new feature will also help capture business elsewhere. I'm not generally privy to this type of information (I'm one of the devlopers tripping over other developers), but I have noticed a few times where different customers have come up with the same request, allowing us to sell to both of them, with a single unit of work. I would have to imagine it happens way more than I know about. So, yes, that feature you so desperately want is going to be sold to your competitor. It's also going to be sold to many more companies that aren't your competitor, but who are helping fund this development through their purchase of that feature. This is not just stingyness. This is cost effectiveness. The value of that feature to your company may not be high enough to warrant paying for the whole feature outright and still maintain a reasonable return on investment. But it may be high enough when amortised over all the sales your vendor will generate from the feature, and, since you had a say in the creation of that feature, presumably it will fit your processes better than anyone else's, which still gives you an edge over your competitors. That had better be a huge cost saver for you to want to purchase exclusive rights to it, because the vendor/contractor will not be able to make a larger ROI than whatever you're paying them, so they need to increase the price to pay for all the future ROIs they are going to miss out on.
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