NewsForge has an article, Opportunities for Open Source software in the publishing industry, that looks at how to apply open source tools in the many areas of publishing. Publishing — by firms that produce newspapers, magazines, books of all kinds, and even corporate documents — is a very well understood business where the leaders are firms who have cut costs to the absolute minimum and exist on very thin margins, thanks to intense competition from other publishers and other media, including, nowadays, the Internet.
“Open Source developers can also find lots of niche opportunities — publishing is a huge and varied field, and these customers will listen to developers who can save them money. Where Gutenberg failed, an Open Source developer may well succeed.“
This goes back to Apple’s licensing habits
Apple had far and away the best processor and microcomputer but would not license the source coding widely. So the publishers bought into the obviously superior product but then lost the ability to use the growing and now burgeoning open source materials because the system is still very proprietary. I think the publishers systems they currently have will go the way of the Betamax, an obviously superior product that was mismanaged to death. Just a slower death in this case.
Almost, not quite.
[Please note: I’m writing this from the point of view of someone who really likes working in publishing — I’m also not opposed to the idea of intellectual property changing profoundly as a concept, nor to open source, etc. Also, I probably don’t have to mention that I’m not speaking for my employer.]
I work for a very large medical publisher, and definitely encourage open source developers to bid on publishing projects and try to get their collective foot in the door. But there are a couple of minor areas the author missed: economics and culture. If you’re going to try to break into the business, my unsolicited advice is to pay attention to those two.
Publishing documents is a very complex process, and getting all the technological pieces to fit together is very, very hard. We come up with some idiosyncratic solutions; there are some items for which we still use couriers, for example, because it’s actually the most economical way to get certain types of files places — and yes, I mean the guys on the bikes with the floppy bags. These are solutions into which a lot of trust is placed, and as the author does note, a lot of investment is made. The outlay and energy necessary to shake off that kind of inertia is enormous. The payoff has to be so exciting that we jump up out of our rolly chairs, ready to seamlessly renegotiate all these solutions. It takes a lot to get us out of our chairs, and sometimes more than it should.
Publishing is also in a position right now of being threatened on a number of fronts. It frequently doesn’t know what to do with new and emerging formats. The boundaries of copyright law are contested, and seem impermanent. Part of the culture of publishing, right now, is a sense that a) we are content providers, and b) that we have intellectual property. We stand to lose a lot by notions of intellectual property changing, and so we’re pretty careful about stepping on other peoples’ IP toes. It would behoove open source developers, when trying to sell to us, to play down the open-sourciness, and play up the savings, efficiency, and ability to interact with other systems. Even though open source is no longer a new and astonishing concept to people who pay attention to it, it may be to the people who’re in a position to pay you, so be flexible about presentation.
I haven’t been in this business for long enough to make comparisons to other events, but find someone who has, and ask them, ok? If it matters to you, I mean.