JBoss and the optimal model for open source support
However you dress it up, at the end of the day open source is about support. It’s therefore critical that open source companies invest heavily in support.
How? JBoss provides the answer. (Here’s the layout of JBoss’ support offerings.)
Who do you get when you ping JBoss for support? You get a core engineer. At JBoss, engineers commit to spend 25% of their time supporting customers. (At Google, they commit to spending 20% of their time thinking up also-ran applications - ouch! I’d rather get the support engineer.) The head of support, then, is primarily responsible for corraling engineers to ensure they’re spending at least 25% of their time on customers - current, not future. They don’t hire low-end support people - they hire engineers who also do support.
This is an exceptional model (one that we’re trying to emulate). The benefits are obvious:
- Customers don’t have to waste time with someone that can’t understand their issues. They quickly get to the very engineers who wrote the product.
- JBoss (now Red Hat) benefits because customers want to buy from the source of the code.
- JBoss engineers benefit because they get to hear from real people with real problems with their software. Engineers can fall into a “My code has no problems” mentality. Talking with customers helps them see how it (mal)functions in the real world, helping them develop better products.
Again, whether you’re using an “on-ramp” (SugarCRM) model or a Red Hat model or whatever, support is the core of an open source company. JBoss shows how to do it right.