With the worldwide market not all that conducive to heavy IT spending, innovative features and functionality seem to be what's separating the successful software vendors from the unsuccessful ones.
But, customers shouldn't have to pay through their ears for that innovation by being forced to upgrade to newer and newer iterations of an operating system, office productivity suite and commodity server software each time a vendor releases a new version.
The sad part is that they do, however, simply because this is what the market has been programmed to do by the proprietary software model.
Catch-22
It's a vicious circle - vendors 'invent' new features and functionality that users often don't need, package these into ever more impressive looking and sounding versions of the new software and, through phasing out support for the previous versions of the software, nudge customers into paying for an upgrade and moving to the newer software.
And quite simply, because these new iterations come to market at anywhere between two-yearly and yearly intervals, the market perceives there to be a great deal of innovation in the proprietary software landscape... far more than there is in the open source software landscape.
What they often fail to realise, however, is that just as much, if not more, innovation takes place in the open source space - the only difference is that the open source software model favours releasing patches and upgrades as and when they are ready.
Furthermore, when new features and functionality are decided on in the open source space, they're only pursued if there's a strong call for that functionality from the user community.
And then, as and when these features are tested and quality checked, they are integrated into the software - new features and functionality aren't held back until the next major release of the software.
Creating sales
By contrast, because they need to sustain their sales cycle of releasing a new version every year to two years, many proprietary vendors create new features and functionality without actually consulting their users about their usefulness.
When new features and functionality are decided on in the open source space, they're only pursued if there's a strong call for that functionality from the user community.
Muggie van Staden is MD of Obsidian Systems.
And often (even if some of those new features are useful), because they're held back until the next major point release of the product, the new functionality has aged and become less useful.
Because of the increased traction open source has been getting in the past couple of years, proprietary vendors have to re-evaluate their options.
With certain open source solutions, such as the Firefox Web browser and OpenOffice productivity suite gaining good followings in the market, it truly seems like users are more comfortable with seeing the features they need becoming available as and when the developers have them ready for the market, as opposed to waiting for the next major release.
And proprietary vendors have to think about how they can do the same.
Just like open source was a new take on paying for software on a subscription basis as opposed to in a once-off fashion every year to two years, the subscription and rental models being bandied about by proprietary vendors are a huge change.
But, thankfully, they're one that customers are more comfortable with. Over the coming years, however, even more pressure is headed towards the proprietary vendors - particularly on the fronts of value for money and openness.
But that's a discussion for another day.
* Muggie van Staden is MD of Obsidian Systems.
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