#Carista, Partner Apps, Partners, Tools, Users

Open source software philosophy, the Carista connection

First, I’d better say that we are a company that sells a freemium and premium product. We don’t use open source code.

That said, we do have quite a bit of “open source” in our perspective of how the market for our type of technology will evolve. We use an open architecture, have multiple compatible app partners and a very compatible hardware type.

The freemium option, by our own admission, is not “quite there yet.”We’re going to work on that this year to increase it’s usefulness to customers.

There appears to be a common perception that open source equates to “free.”

The primary pricing objection in our case seems to be; why am I buying this physical “thing” and then paying for another “nebulous” thing? It appears to be an argument for bundling the software and hardware together.

How to do that, when we update our software so frequently and when software is primarily what we do, not hardware?

Complaining customers often baulk at our subscription model, but seem quite fine with Microsoft tools being bundled with their PC or Gmail coming with the unspoken advertising and targeting value to Google. Out of sight, out of mind in many cases. You are paying, but the payment is not something you object to.

You don’t see the fee, or at least you don’t “feel”the fee.

What we see is that some customers buy the adapter and feel (rightly or wrongly) that they shouldn’t buy the premium software afterwards. They believe it should be bundled, like Microsoft office packages. They feel “double charged”, which they are, as they’ve bought two items. They “feel” cheated as they only “wanted” to buy one thing, not two.

What you’re looking at here is the perception of “value for money.” The user does not see the hidden costs associated with G suite tools and doesn’t see the value in the higher specification Microsoft suite (or the reason to pay for it). It is a personal decision, price versus value versus utility and scope. It is a buying decision but one taken largely subconsciously.

The same people will also look at google and the the Gmail suite as a competitive offering that stacks up against the Microsoft 365 suite of tools as vindication. It is true that Gmail is an excellent tool and one that cornered the market by offering “more functionality for less fee.” Google trades your user data value, not cash value. It is an interesting move.

We don’t profile our users, so we don’t have a user data value (yet).

There is a future perspective to look at. We can see the need to update the hardware more than we are now doing, as the changes in how a vehicle is built, designed, owned, discarded, maintained and used is in flux.

Why not sell you a new adapter each year and bundle the yearly updates or model updates with that? That seems to be what some our competitors are doing.

In the apps market when so many apps are free, there is even less incentive to unpack why a company would ask you to pay for software if you are a user.

As a user, you can take the self serving position that “apps should be free” as a kind of motif. You don’t need to address why, just nod when someone else says it and roar approval when it is suggested. I would call this the “blind leading the blind scenario.” It’s not a “business” model. It’s we want to use it, but not pay for that use.

We know that both Microsoft office and Gmail are great pieces of software and we pay for them in different ways. Neither is “free”in an absolute sense, they just take their payments in multiple different ways.

We have followed an open architecture, we’ve used a widely available hardware type. We’ve worked with multiple partners to increase the viability of our overall offering, both in hardware and in software.

Much of this ethos falls into the “open source” philosophy, although we don’t use open source code for proprietary, security and intellectual property reasons. We’re are though looking to widen the community, compatibility and connectivity. We will continue to do this. We will widen the conversation with our app partners. We will talk to our hardware partners, all in the effort to produce the most widely functional tool-set.

We will look to add to the overall functionality of connected car apps by being a conduit, a tool of choice, a means of applying more tech to your car. It might not be “open source” or “free,” but you’re going to gain many benefits from this approach. Let’s call it a hybrid  technology.

Whether those benefits are worth paying for, that’s your call.

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*For supported models only. Find all supported models here: https://caristaapp.com/all-vehicles

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