The downside of choice

I figure I might as well maintain my status as Resident Inquisitor of Open Source Myths with a discussion on the value of choice. A friend at a Fortune 500 company recently set me to thinking on the problems (and opportunities) that open source affords vis-a-vis choice. (I've opined on open source choice before, in case you're interested.)

I'm very fond of telling enterprises that open source maximizes their choice. I often use one of Larry's graphics to illustrate how much better off they are:


Look at all that choice the CIO now has! She can spend her money in a variety of different ways.

Oddly enough, that can be a problem. In many ways, it's easier to be forced into a decision: if I only have $10 to spend, in some ways I'm glad to have $9.95 in Arsenal tickets staring at me. My choice is made. No need to worry about spending $2 to send condolences to the Barca fans. :-)

However, there's a much more difficult angle on choice for CIOs: how to figure out what to choose in the first place. My friend tells me that it can be hugely time consuming to download and try out open source software. Vendors like MySQL and Alfresco take it as a matter of course that our would-be buyers will first download, test, and evaluate our software, and then opt to buy it. However, what if they go through all that effort only to find out the product is rubbish? Lots of man hours on the road less traveled...and it will have made all the (negative) difference.

Oddly enough, in the commercial world, the buyer gets the product largely "site-unseen" and then has the pleasure of beating up the vendor to get them to make it work. They paid big money for it, so they're a) not going to recognize the sunk cost and move on and b) have given the vendor a strong incentive to fix the problems or face a battering in the word-of-mouth press.

For many, they would prefer to throw down the cash and pray it works. For others, they'd prefer to invest their time/money in experimenting toward a good fit (though, let's face it, the process for winnowing down a universe of products/projects to a small group for a bake-off is the same - IT buyers are always going to talk to peers, read what the media has to say, etc., as I've noted before).

Over time, I think it will become increasingly easy to find good open source software. So, some of the "cost of choice" will be removed for my friend. But for now, there are real costs associated with choosing open source. Worthwhile costs, yes. But costs, nonetheless.