By Trey Hatt
Not all of us have to drop thousands of dollars on Web development software to go out and make a living as a pioneer on the ever-expanding digital frontier.
Jeff Eaton, a Web architect at Lullabot who builds Websites on the Drupal CMS platform and trains other people who want to do so, will lead a panel discussion on “Selling Your Milk When the Cow is Free” at the South by Southwest Interactive panel.
“Individually, we also spend a lot of time developing the Drupal software itself — adding features, fixing bugs, and coordinating with other people in the open source community who want to help build it, too,” he said. “I spend a lot of my time working as an ‘expert on call’ for teams that are building large sites with it; because of the time that, I’ve invested in Drupal itself. I’m able to help accelerate their learning process. It’s really gratifying to see those projects come to fruition.”
Eaton was working with proprietary software a decade ago, but began tinkering with open source software on his own as a personal project.
“I found Drupal, started working with it, and within a year or so I’d gotten so involved in the community that it turned into my day job,” Eaton said. “I think that’s a trajectory that a lot of open source developers have followed–they didn’t plan for it, but they discovered that it’s where they really thrived.”
Open source software allows people change, tweak, and modify the source code of a piece of software to make it do exactly what they want.
“What that means to people in various roles can differ,” Eaton said. “For a programmer, it might mean, ‘I can build my dream software without reinventing the wheel.’ For a business that decides to use an open source program instead of a closed-source commercial one, it might mean, ‘We don’t have to pay exorbitant licensing fees.’ For others, it might mean, ‘Other developers are working on building and enhancing this software, not just us. We can be part of a larger team.’”
Eaton will discuss the opportunities—and the challenges—for entrepreneurs who want to open-source their work.
“Building a successful business is always going to be tricky; you need good ideas, good execution, and some luck. If you decide to open-source your work, additional variables come into the picture: other people could build a competing product using the work you’ve done, for example, or people could simply use it and move on without entering into a business relationship with you,” Eaton said. “For some businesses, though, the upsides can be considerable as well. Letting others use the software you’ve built, and enhance it to fit their needs better, might cause it to become far more popular than you’d be able to manage if you were going it alone — leaving your company as the ‘hub’ of a new commercial ecosystem. Or perhaps the software you’re building isn’t your core business at all, just something that you need in order to go about your work. By giving away that tool, or collaborating with others that need similar tools, you can get more bang for your buck, draw in new customers, and so on.”
Eaton is still finalizing the panelist list, but will include other business owners and entrepreneurs who are navigating the uncharted open source wilderness.