A French journalist asked me recently if I believed that open-source enterprise content management (ECM) would explode in 2009. He was very surprised when I said non. I am a fan of open-source—I admire the ethos and the roots of the open-source movement— and I am well aware that many open-source applications are as good (if not better) than their more commercial competitors. But I don’t buy into the current hype.

Why not? First and foremost, the hype is generated by open-source vendors, not buyers and users. And though open-source products appear on shortlists more often today than ever, those products are seldom chosen in the final selection—hence my doubts about a pending explosion.

Before open-source ECM really rocks our world, a few things have to change. Most important, more software options are needed. Presently, with the notable exceptions of Nuxeo, KnowledgeTree, and Alfresco, there is a dearth of ECM products to choose from. Contrast those three with more than 50 open-source web content management tools referenced by OSCOM, the International Association for Open Source Content Management, and you can see that the ECM world—or, to be more specific, the document management world—is in its infancy when it comes to open-source.

Another reason: many buyers still don’t buy into the open-source model, and simply refuse to use open-source applications. Period. They reject it out of hand for one of two reasons:

1. They have a dated and skewed understanding of open-source, imagining these products to be little more than hacker and IT college-type situations.
2. They can’t or don’t want to be a part of, and rely upon, the “community” for development and support.

Conversely, when people select opensource ECM, they do so for one of two reasons:

1. They believe it to be free.
2. They believe it to be cheap. Open-source solutions, however, are neither cheap nor free, which is why they so often fall at the final selection hurdle. Maintenance fees can be high; over time the difference in cost between an opensource option and a more traditional commercial option can be negligible. There typically are savings when using opensource, but the savings are often slimmer than expected.

A current client has a major open-source option on their shortlist as I type this because I recommended that option. However, it stands little chance of success. Why?

1. Maintenance costs—along with development and implementations costs, compared to commercial rivals—have come in surprisingly high.
2. During the tendering process it has become clear, due to a tardy and sloppy request for proposal response, that the open-source vendor simply does not have the resources of its rivals.
3. The more the buyer is finding out about the open-source vendor, the less clear it is how they are different from their commercial rivals.

Fact: many open-source vendors are no different from their commercial rivals:

1. They do have open code that you can feel free to use (though they know you almost certainly won’t).
2. They actually control the code you do use very carefully.
3. Their community may be large but is also largely inactive.
4. The only truly open-source thing about them is that they don’t charge you up front license fees. They do, however, hit you hard for maintenance/support/ development costs.

Remember, this comes from a fan of open-source; and I will continue to recommend open-source options to my clients.

But buyers need to take this route with their eyes wide open. They need to understand the true costs. They need to understand the limitations. They also have to have an appetite for working in a different way with a supplier, throwing off some often expensive bad habits formed in working with proprietary solutions. If they do so, and they embrace not only the promise of open-source, but also its challenges, then they often come out the other end shining.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe  is a principal analyst at CMS Watch . He covers ECM technologies and practices and is an 18-year veteran of the document technology industry.