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I love FOSS, and even though it doesn't work as a model for everything, there are some kinds of applications that just seem to be a perfect fit.
I think one such application is software for CAD as it relates to construction and land surveying(my trade). Much of the design and record data from the field must be accessible for decades and this fact alone builds a strong case for using open formats. Unfortunately, and much to the chagrin of all of the surveyors I know, there seems to be a slow push by the software side of the industry away from using the open formats of old toward proprietary formats. A lot of this is caused by the ever increasing complexity (and reinventing of the wheel) of design software; however, when it comes to boots the ground, not much has changed with means and methods. There are only so many ways to accomplish what we do and most of it has already been optimized. The result of this push toward proprietary formats and overkill software has been the abandonment of good, functional, and simple proprietary software that just worked. Many of the companies that created this good software no longer exist because they have been embraced and extinguished by larger players. There is a growing reality that the only option to keep work going is to pay many 1000's of dollars a year per person for what should be a fairly simple piece of software. This is not the kind of software that would require a lot of support.
So my question is this: What is the best way for me to begin a successful FOSS project like this?
For the record I am not a programmer, but I dabble from time to time. I could foresee it being a fairly easy sell to convince the powers that be to throw some money (one time cost) at a development team to create for us what we need. Between the different companies and contacts that I know in the industry, a sort of corporate crowd funding effort is not far fetched. Why the heck isn't this already done for all the standard corporate software, rather than paying needless licensing fees into perpetuity? Sometimes software just becomes stable. A FOSS solution would be a godsend to smaller mom and pop operations and I think it could cure some of my resentment of people constantly breaking good things for the sake of "progress".
BTW, I have looked at some of the existing open source CAD software and found it all pretty wanting. Could requesting special functionality from these developers be a better route than starting from scratch? Thanks in advance!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:41AM
Yes, companies do not exist if their products generate no income.
Yes, the only way to have working, maintained piece of software in a niche field like this is to pay many thousands of dollars per year for the privilege of having a number of people on the other end of the phone or email or whatever continually keeping the less-than-interesting piece of software that keeps you employed updated and working. Even worse, if the software is OSS, then there is almost no one that will want to pay such a tax because it's a lot of money - you can't monetize it by $5/user like with some fart app.
Furthermore, all the extra stuff you never use are not there because some developer imagined them out of the blue. There were probably a few requests for such or similar feature by its users. These users just weren't yourself.
As for support, no one needs support until you need one. Like no one needs a fire department until things are on fire.
Then you pay 10x for something that in few years becomes obsolete. And if you pay, well, then your competitor in your field will just take what you pay for. If you are OK with that, or you can come together with other land surveyors and distribute the costs by funding a non-profit for the common good, well, then OK. But you pay licenses because that is so much easier to do ;)
You know, like I pay a fee to have clean water to my house because it's so much easier than trying to maintain my own water purification system.