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This was another tumultuos year for the Software industry. Most top companies turned in record profit growth. This may have been a hickup year for the financial markets, but the Internet Industry and the Software business marched on relentlessly. The TurboCASH project has a successful year with new user registrations reaching 50 000. However strong we believe we are as a project, we are merely part of the Open Source industry.  Should our success should be measured against the success of the Internet Industry? I am perhaps being ungrateful, but I am left with  the feeling that in 2007 the Open Source movement stepped sideways.

These were the events that defined it for me.

My 17 year old daughter is a Silver medalist in Computer Science at her school. She comes to me asking to buy her a copy of Microsoft Office so that she can work on it at home. The "free software" licence that Microsoft negotiated with schools does not extend to students using it at home. Anyone who knows about software development will know that real advancement in computer knowlege is not made at 10-30 in class, but home alone at 2.00 am in the morning. So as long as you want to be an average student using it a couple of hours a week, fine. Anything more than that brother - pay. How did we let them get away with that? Shame on the South African government for leading us down this path.  I gave my daughter a copy of Open Office and told her that exam results are not the ultimate outcome.

 Sun moves its energies from Open Office  to Star Office and enters into a deal with Google to give Star Office away free. What makes this deal so annoying, is that here are two high level advocates of Open Source, but when they get the chance to do a really high profile deal, they do it on a closed product.  Its all part of the creation of the idea that the Free product is inferior to the paid for product. Those of us that truly know Open source know this to be the reverse.

While I am on about Google, it was annoying to us to see them link with  Quickbooks, in a deal which had absolutely no prospect of success. How much better would it have been if Google had invested the same funding in an Open Source offering like TurboCASH?

 In an interview with a journalist this year, he tells me that he was surprised at the quality  interface and finish of TurboCASH. he finds that most Open Source products are "unfinished". Now we take a great deal of pride in out software finish - installation, interface, bug repairs, data integrity, platform robustness, documentation, web support. It is a major problem to us if, by being seen as Open Source, users perceive TurboCASH as of "lower quality". 

The rise of Free services like Facebook and Filesfrom has blurred the distinction between "free" and "open source". We have rested for too long in the Open Source industry on the benefit of our Zero Price. In the end of the day for users its not about price its about quality of experience. Open Source products have to be better. As the volumes rise and the Web becomes more ubiquitous, the cost of commercial software will drop.

We are losing the desktop battle. The release of Vista has left the Linux distributions looking parochial. Linux distributions should be embracing emulators like Wine. Its not about  being anti Windows, its about giving those millions of XP users a smooth upgrade path and the ability to bring along their software. As an Open Source Publisher of TurboCASH Accounting, the feeling that we get from the Linux community is that it is "our problem"  as to how to migrate. This leaves us in an invidious position. The upgrade path to Vista looks a lot easier and simpler to follow.

For historical reasons we use Borland Delphi for our core TurboCASH development. This year they spun their development division off into Codegear. There was much talk of promise and involvement with the Open Source industry.  This all came to naught. Their free offerings of Turbo Delphi turned out to be such crippleware that they have little value. Their efforts to get involved with Open Source projects like PHP and Ruby were nothing more than attempts to close off parts for these projects for commercial benefit. If the Open Source industry is not able to attract large scale players to the pure Open Source model, then we are all left standing.

All around us, Compiere, MySQL being the largest, companies are perverting the Open Source model and introducing all manner of euphamizms like "enterprise versions" and "professional support packages". Open Source works best when is is driven by the free spirit. The real success comes from laying a frameworks for free participation. Closing off parts of the project in an attempt to force revenue from the community is short run thinking. 

While the benefits run to Millions we have not been able to engage the significant financial support of  any large corporates or governments for developing Open Source Software. We see many tentative efforts to get involved in using Open Source software as users, but no real effort to encourage development. The TurboCASH project for examples has continued to be financed by the tireless contributions of its members. Our corporates and government seem content to spend Billions on inferior software that is marketed better than Open Source.

It is time for the Open Source industry to grow up and realize that we are subject to the same constraints as any business. Having the best product is not the guarantee to success. We have been far too focused on technical excellence and 2007 showed that venture capital success and old fashioned marketing techniques still dominate.