Nice thread to start a new year with. I think it must be put into some FAQ section, as it regularly pops up here.
My 2 cents on the subject, hopefully unbiased despite some closer relationship to the OCC company...
To answer the original question of the thread whether OCC has a value I’d suggest we look from multiple perspectives.
First things first. Measure your TCO (total cost of ownership). You have to invest your time (learning curve is steep as people rightfully claim) but apart from that there is nothing you are obliged to pay. Compare that to run-time fees or royalties other similar libraries bound you to. Would you choose in their favor ? In developing financial crisis when cost cutting will be (or already is) dramatic, financial aspects will be top priority. Managers will be more inclined to spend personnel’s hours than dollars. Any senior managers of the companies using other geometric kernels I spoke with in the past claimed they suffered from permanent license fees they had to pay to licensors.
Open Source. I am personally a strong believer that future of software is open source. More control, more security, better portability, whatever. It’s becoming mainstream. If your software is open source, it does not automatically grant you competitive advantages but you can convert it to such. OCC does use it, in my opinion.
Is OCC ready to use out of the box by any average developer ? No, it is not. By why would you expect it to be? I feel that the global trend in the world is that software is becoming a commodity, and people expect that there is already software able to solve their problems whatever they are. It’s almost already the case for information which is available from any spot in the world thanks to internet – google, wikipedia, youtube,… Everything is at your finger tips. With raise of Open Source wave, Linux, Sourceforge people raise similar expectations to software. I think we’ll be there but not in short term and/or not for any kind of software.
Why then doesn’t OCC company try to improve user’s experience and to shorten its learning curve ? Well, actually it does (check their regularly updated documentation sections and samples, detailed Release Notes, etc). But again, let’s look deeper. What would be company’s motivation ? Would would *you* do if you were its CEO (that’s an interesting perspective my former Intel manager taught me to think from) ? There is no direct revenue from OCC licenses and spending staff hours to improve usability would undermine operating profit and would not make shareholders happier, right ? That’s why we normally see improvements stemming from OCC own commercial projects. Does that mean OCC is closed to community claims and requests ? No. They simply receive lower priority.
E-learning. If you did not get the service you requested, just contact the customer service team. Check what went wrong and ask for a service. Contacts on the site should normally work. And don’t hesitate to remind if you feel there was no timely response. But don’t expect too much from e-learning. At least, that it will give you secret documentation not available in the product releases.
So, does OCC offer a competitive value ? Absolutely. Does it require zero investments ? No. You still have you have to pay in your hours, and/or service fees should you decide so. Are there rooms for improvements ? Countless. The point is their priorities, for the community and for the company, and its shareholders. These priorities may often not match.
My recommendation would be to discuss with the OCC team what could be possible business model between your company and theirs. Talk to your manager about budget constraints for your project and how to work within them best regardless if you use OCC or not.
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