eCommerce News & Resources by oscommerceuniversity.com

Open Source eCommerce platforms and bootstapping go together like salt and pepper, ham and eggs or turkey and dressing. That’s a fact.

Even when the software is commercialized, it offers significant advantages to the bootstrapping firm in the form of the implicit opportunity to craft new capabilities over time as funding allows.  Which is why I take this opportunity to reply to Javier Rojas description of bootstrapping, a  process in which founders self finance their way to profitability in his article “The Art of the Bootstrap” at venturebeat.com.

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Thanks to a recent post by Rhea Anthony on the osCommerce forums, I recently discovered a post by  Amy Hoy regarding folks who spend their time hitting forums for help, but not returning any.  In her post at http://www.slash7.com/articles/2006/03/22/s-o-s-save-our-sanity she coins the term Help Vampires.

Amy observes that Help Vampires can be the death of a community – and I think she is right.  Her response?

Quote:

“They’re not evil creatures, Help Vampires. They act only on their blind instinct to feed, driven by base urges like most living things. Often even they themselves are not aware of their Help Vampire status, so leave your stakes at home.

In light of these facts, I will provide information on reforming / re-education Help Vampires in addition to outfitting you with information on identifying and tracking them. If in the course of events you discover that you yourself are a Help Vampire, you will learn how to control your vampiric ways.”

Well said!  She goes on to give quite a nice plan for dealing with the critters which involves a three prong approach to reforming the Help Vampire:

1. Create resources for Help Vampires (and regular folks) to help themselves.
2. Cease all behavior which enables Help Vampires’ vampy behavior.
3. Meet Help Vampires head-on.

I would add to this one a fourth – make sure that Help Vampires know how they can help you!

Here are a few things Help Vampire could possibly bring to the table if they just thought to do so:

1. domain expertise – as in business practice expertise.  Many developers lack this, and would welcome input.
2. positive feedback – telling a developer what they have done right helps them focus attention on matters that DO need improvement.
3. send cash – many Open Source projects are done in spare time, and carry no direct monetary return to developers.

The most helpful thing a Help Vampire can do is learn and use better problem resolution skills, so here are a few links to other pages likely to be helpful in that regard..

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html  is Eric Raymond (ESR) ‘s guide to how to ask questions most productively.  Widely linked to, this is an Internet classic and must read.  Having once been taken to task for some slightly adult language in this page, I warn the sensitive reader to stay away from this link, and to avoid asking hackers for help….

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html  is Simon Tatham’s discourse on how to right a useful bug reports.  Having seen a few of those from the receiving end, I assure you that no matter how many bugs your software has, the reports you receive will have more.  If you are going to use Open Source software, READ THIS and limit the blood loss!

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Recently, my new partner, and I have been working up service products for our eCommerce focused hosting firm – StrikeHawk Hosting. Both of us having worked with Chain Reaction Web and its associated DBA’s it was natural if not desirable for us to begin with a service model similar to the one presented there. But I have never been truly happy with selling service by connectivity mode. Support packages setup via communication method help the providing company to cut costs. But by their very nature they promote a widened communications loop and slower solutions if any. This product formulation focuses entirely too much on solving the problem of the customers cost and the providers expense. I think the email, live chat, phone support method of breaking down support products solves these two issues very nicely. But in practice, it appears to fail in solving the customers actual issue in a timely fashion – and isn’t that the point of support? Any way – when wrestling with a problem of this sort, I often resort to some related reading in an effort to bring some focus to the issues. In this case, my wife happened to have just the book in her professional collection. The book is Kenneth Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles ‘ “Raving Fans – A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service”. I found it very helpful.

Its a short read – only 137 numbered pages in all, but the content is powerful. It correctly states that satisfied customers are not enough for a business to thrive. It sets a goal of generating Raving Fans and present 3 basic rules which can help any business achieve that goal.

The rules are:

1. Decide What You Want
2. Discover What The Customer Wants
3. Deliver The Vision Plus One Percent

It is not quite that simple of course – and the rest of the book expands on these rules quite a bit. It boils down to this:

Deciding what you want entails creating a vision of perfection centered on the customer. This affects the boundaries of your services but is not the sole determining factor. This step is important because without a vision of your own which is focused on the customer, you have little or no chance of understanding the customers vision and or needs.

Discovering the customers needs is tricky. It depends on determining who the real customer or customers might be, as well as what their vision really is. Three basic actions are recommended – discover who the customer is, ask them what they need, and listen to them carefully.

The authors also outline three traps of customer listening. The customer who says one thing but means another. The customer who responds “fine” when asked about service quality and the customer who says nothing. Interestingly enough, they also place some responsibility on the customer. If you get bad service, and say nothing – you are partially responsible for an environment of continued poor service.

The third rule is deliver the vision plus one percent. This involves reshaping your own vision to meet the customers, and always delivering a bit more than expected. But it goes a bit further than that and has some interesting implication for employee motivation.

What does all this have to do with product design? Well, as the products involved are service based, I though quite a lot!

In my experience, eCommerce merchants have several different kinds of support and service needs. There are needs related to how to use the software, correcting defects in the software, and modifying the software, software configuration or server configuration to meet their needs. I plan to build our service and support operations around these areas – charging rates sufficient to allow us to build a qualified and talented staff committed as I am to delivering the customers expectations and more.

We will begin by launching a site operations management service, and reshaping our support options in a similar way – with a focus on hourly rates. These products will be provided at our hosting site at http://www.hosting-4-creloaded.com .

As for the Open Source Commerce University – we have made arrangements for Kerry Watson to build a series of courses on site operations based on her book Managing an Online Store. These courses will be focused on operating specific Open Source eCommerce packages covered in the book – and offering expanded material as well.

Feedback on this post would be much appreciated – whether you are a consumer or provider of Open Source eCommerce service and support. Thanks!

What does this have to do with product design? Well, that is where the third rule comes in – deliver the vision plus one percent.

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Recently, I was asked to explain how I thought any company could protect their brand when releasing software under the General Public License. This shortly after I encountered a post stating CRE Loaded “Never made it clear” the software was released under GPL. The second assertion is quickly dealt with. Provided the user can read basic English – the licensing is posted in the footer of every CRE Loaded distribution as follows:

E-Commerce Engine Copyright © 2003 osCommerce Portions Copyright © 2003 – 2006 CRE Loaded Project osCommerce provides no warranty and is redistributable under the GNU General Public License Chain Reaction Works, Inc provides no warranty except as to associated support contracts which are limited by and to the Service Level Agreement.

Powered by Oscommerce Supercharged by CRE Loaded

If this does not make it clear the observer is either illiterate, stupid or criminal and hoping his potential victims suffer those conditions.

Frankly, I don’t understand how this long after the initial GPL release anyone could not understand it’s implications. Probably the most important fact about the GPL is that is is a license. Let me say that again – slowly: the General Public License is a LICENSE.

A license is defined by Mirriam-Webster as “ c: a grant by the holder of a copyright or patent to another of any of the rights embodied in the copyright or patent short of an assignment of all rights”. Parse that slowly if you will. “A grant by the holder of a copyright or patent” – the developing authority holds either a copyright, a patent, or both to their software. “short of an assignment of all rights” – the developing authority retains rights to the software. There. Was that so hard?

So, the question is, to what rights to do the developers retain ownership and/or control. The nature of software licensing should make it pretty clear that those rights include the copyright – which the GPL allows them to enforce; and the rights to trademarks, service marks and other tools used to brand the software. Given that anyone in the software industry in general and ecommerce in particular deal with licensing every day by now we should understand this. A huge percentage of all computers sold around the world carry with them a Microsoft software license. This is a given. Yet no one doubts that that license allows them to use the software, but does not give them a right to call themselves Microsoft, claim a partnership with Microsoft, use the Microsoft Logo on their own products or in any other way represent themselves as being a part of Microsoft.

What the osCommerce Project has to say on these issues can be found here, in their own statements on Trademarks and Copyrights. They are well worth reading. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that they should be required reading of anyone who installs the software. They are easy enough to understand, but equally easy to forget. I am thankful to have been given reason to review them – and plan some site modifications as a result. I want it to be clearly understood that this site is about all Open Source eCommerce, not just osCommerce. Nor is there any connection between this site and the osCommerce project. We are not reviewed or controlled by the project, and other than their clearly identified RSS feeds all content here is copyrighted under terms substantially similar if not identical to those posted by the osCommerce Project.

Their position boils down to normal usage and common sense – materials are copyrighted by the producers, some rights are granted them as the site owner, all software contributed is donated under the same GPL which applies to osCommerce itself, and their trademarks remain theirs. This is as it should be, and not substantially different than many other Open Source projects. Another interesting document which can be found on the osCommerce project site is their Open Source Definition

The first three items are of particular interest here. To quote their document, making fair use, those items are:

• Free Redistribution
  No restrictions are placed on parties from selling of giving away the software.
• Source Code Availability
  The software must include source code and must also allow for binary distributions when there is a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code.
• Derived Works
  Modifications and derived works must be allowed, and must be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

So, getting back to the remaining question of how branding can be protected while the software is given away.

The pertinent GPL Version 2 clause in my opinion is section 7 (aka the “Liberty or Death” clause”). It says the following:

“7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License”So – you can’t stop the software from being given away. But, ” It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims;” Brands and trademarks are property. They are subject to many property rights both implicit and explicit – though these vary significantly from one jurisdiction to the next (one reason there is a GPL 3.x). They existed when the first GPL was written – and this clause has the significance of requiring any further distribution for sale to be clearly identified as “Derived Works“.

So, you can modify commercial GPL software, you can give it away, or sell it. But you legally, morally or ethically cannot do so while claiming to be the original author.

There remain other issues, but from an ethical if not legal standpoint there is no real obstacle to commercializing Open Source software. In fact, there are many issues which push for it – the need or desire of business operators to be able to obtain support, or to acquire a version of the software which is less unstable than the free releases being just two good examples. More on those in a future posting.

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