
Ask HN: Idea. A negotiation platform for open source commercial support - lumo
I&#x27;d love to hear your thoughts on this.<p>Idea: A negotiation platform to ease the providing (and requesting) of professional software support. Instead of trudging through long mail threads with multiple awkward attachments, and then trying to make mutual sense of it all, how about using a neat all-in-one tool to keep better track of the whole process?<p>I see the tool tightly integrating several fundamental processes - discussion, contract agreement, code&#x2F;task perusal, money transaction.<p>What do you think?<p>(Hm, I guess the platform wouldn&#x27;t have to be confined to software...)
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BjoernKW
This might be interesting for any kind of software-related service,
development, design or otherwise, not just for open source software support.
As a freelance consultant I can see how such a process could benefit both the
service provider and the client.

However, this would've to include some kind of task review, escrow and
automatic payment on successful completion to truly deliver. In other words,
you'd have to upend to whole process of how software-related services are
provided for the most these days:

\- client looks for consultant who matches technical requirements (or often
rather has a recruiter look for such a consultant)

\- consultant works x amount of hours

\- consultant bills client amount x

Therein lies the rub: In the market as of today it's very difficult to market
and sell clearly defined and measurable software-related services, which is
why most of those services are often still sold by the hour. This is non-
sensical for the most part because what client wants is not hours spent but
problems solved.

Measuring those problems and their solutions however, still is tough. Being
able to adequately productize services it what it ultimately comes down to I
suppose.

If you're willing to address these larger issues as a whole I'd be happy to
hear your thoughts (contact info's available in my profile).

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lumo
Your valuable feedback is much appreciated.

Because you have experience as a freelance consultant, I'd very much like to
share what I have in mind and to hear what you think. I'll be sure to send you
a message later on.

As you've pointed out, the review, payment, and mediation (not only financial
via escrow, but also perhaps legal?) processes would be the main features of
such a platform. And, indeed, the quantification of work (and its subsequent
proof) is at the crux of this general idea.

This latter problem seems very complex to me, and I wonder if there's any
feasible solution beyond a basic honor system.

Even if the larger context is "open source," there is clearly "closed"
information being transmitted, and I'm wondering if there's any sane way to
marry the two systems of trust.

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flowersits
When I provided commercial support for some open source project, I exchanged
total 55 mails through 7 threads consisting of requirements, reports, code,
invoices, internal conversation between colleagues, and so on just for one
support and really needed some unified management tool or service at that
time.

Well, it seems that your idea meets my needs well. IMHO, I would like you to
remind that negotiation must be in private in most cases.

~~~
lumo
Wow, yours is precisely the use case I've been considering. I'd really like to
dig deeper into your commercial support experience. What features would you
say are the most necessary in such a "unified management tool"?

Thank you for your comment.

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Spooky23
Interesting idea. I'd suggest broaden the idea to a service.

It might be a way to open commercial OSS to other markets, such as .gov, where
standardized contract structures, SOWs, and procurement vehicles are complex
to deal with.

For packaged software, resellers like SHI, CDW, EnPointe, etc provide a
service where they take a percentage in exchange for handling the paperwork,
etc.

~~~
lumo
I appreciate the fantastic feedback and examples.

The idea indeed seeks to broaden itself. For the moment, I'm considering a
distributed platform that can tailor to many use cases. But the context of
commercial support provision in open source is, for me, the most familiar.

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manx
I'm doing research on something more general. What you describe is one use-
case of a general discussion and collaboration protocol I think we really
need. I'm tackling this with a hypergraph discourse structure combinend with
community moderation. But a lot more research needs to be done.

~~~
lumo
Sounds like a lot of fun. I'd love to hear more about the research.

One area that gets my brain cycles rolling is the private and sensitive nature
of making contractual agreements. It doesn't really fit the collaborative,
community-driven, mass interest model with very many parties.

~~~
manx
One fundamental result is that ordinary people don't have any problems dealing
with graph interfaces. Many Computer Scientists and Mathematicians I talked to
predicted the opposite. This opens the door to experimenting with many
different discourse models.

