This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

“The more they give, the better off they are. The more they open up, the better off they are. The more they let you inside their kitchen the better off they are.”

So when can we expect Basecamp to be opensourced?

Joyent is doing it with Connector, when will 37signals do it with their flagship app?

Jason,

What you describe is a road to success if and only if you are outstanding in your field.

Not all of the children can be above average.

That’s a great analogy, Jason. So many people are obsessed with “secrets”, and the upshot is usually that no one ever hears about them or their work.

Another point to reinforce why we won’t see these 37signals Apps open-sourced (and to reinforce the chef/cook analogy):

While these chefs give away their recipes, they don’t give away the food they cook :-)

Actually you can’t publish a cookbook unless you are already a name chef these days. Also there have been some accusations (particularly Italian Slow Food books) that the chefs aren’t giving the real recipes and keeping secrets back.

I agree with JF’s response to Not For Everyone.

I have a marketing coleague who was fond of saying that he was always willing to give away the “ingredients”, which makes people more willing to pay for the “recipe”. Not an exact correlation, but similar.

Nice post, JF

In reply to Dr. Pete I agree secrets aren’t a good thing. At Juvely we originally kept everything secret and weren’t revealing what we were up to. This led to rather boring blog posts about the same old thing. Once we revealed what was going on it seemed much better as everyone knew what we were up to and had the chance to make comments and suggestions.

As for our cookbook. Well at the moment we haven’t really got anything but if I find something that doesn’t work out of the box I will write a blog post about it. This not only lets other people do what I did but also provides a reference for me if I need to do it again!

When a chef releases a cookbook, he will receive money for every copy that is being sold. The more popular he gets, the more books he can release, and the more copies of each will be sold.

This is not quite the case when blogging about how you did something difficult that people usually pay you for. It helps popularity perhaps, but it’s a long road before that pays off I think.

Also – would Coca Cola win anything at all if they gave away their secret recipe? ;-)

Also – would Coca Cola win anything at all if they gave away their secret recipe? ;-)

The secret recipe is not what keeps Coke from being on top. Any moderate lab can tell you the Coke secret. What keep Coke on top is Marketing.

I wrote an open source budgeting app in Rails. I don’t give it away because I think it’s the way everyone should do a budget – I give it away because it’s a recipe for learning Rails.

People have actually tracked down my phone number and called just to thank me for releasing my source code. That just feels good, and I know it will help my consulting business.

The app is ActiveBudget and the source is available on Google Code.

One of my favorite Seth Godin quotes is “Ideas worth spreading, spread. Ideas that spread, win.”

As a consultant, my “cookbook” is my blog – and the framework for all the work that my company does is clearly laid out at the top of the sidebar, “table-of-contents” style.

The more people read it, use it, and get some value out of it, the more my phone rings…

This strikes home as I evaluate a popular paid web analytics tool versus another popular but free tool.

For me, the difference is some free tools versus paid tools isn’t just the price but the ease of using and understanding the tool. Many free tools (whether or not they have paid versions as well) make is easy to sign up and use the tool to see if you like it.

What I have found with many pay-only tools is that the steps to get a “demo” are many more and/or require calling or emailing people, who don’t always get right back to you.

I was amazed my how difficult it was to find a demo for a hosted version of popular web analytics software tool. I was also amazed at the differences in content for some of the pay-only tools versus the free tools.

If the pay-only versions could approach their marketing and copywriting as if they were giving it away, it might be one step toward a better experience. They seem so invested in protecting their product, it is reflected in the entire experience.

Recently I’ve been looking for a new or used car. Most car salesmen are a pain in the neck, but I very quickly came to trust the one who disclosed to me the purchase prices of the used cars.

On the other hand, one salesman kept saying “trust me” while we talked, and he also told me that he “doesn’t hide anything”. But when I asked him what he paid for the car, he said “Well, that’s a different kind of question. This is a business you know.” And my trust evaporated. It was like being in a Kafka novel.

Though most my clients couldn’t care less about my coding techniques, they seem to be very happy with my transparency in pricing and my habit of communicating with them every day about what I’ve done, what troubles I’ve run into, and what I plan to do the next day.

@Britt: It makes such a difference when the person/people you’re dealing with are being protective! In both personal and professional relationships, it feels like they’re behind a one-way mirror, trying to figure out and calculate the best response. I’ve lived with people who are very protective, and it’s very difficult to feel at ease with them. By the way, what is the free tool you’ve been looking at?

That is a terrible analogy. Those chefs are famous b/c they are on TV. My local chef is not famous because he is always in the kitchen when I’m eating. I like ROR and basecamp, but this post was completely self-serving and boring.

While I agree with your post for the most part, I don’t think these chefs are ever “giving away” their recipes. They’re certainly being open about their ideas, methods, and in some cases I imagine, secrets, but they’re getting paid well for this.

Either directly through book sales, or indirectly through sponsorship/advertising/fees for a TV show, all these chefs are getting well compensated for what they put out into the world.

But generally, I see exactly what you mean about open ideas.

When I wear my consulting hat, I give away a lot of good content to generate new clients. I help until it hurts and much of what I do to boost my consulting is 100% free.

This is the essence of the trial offer. It is also a try it before you can buy it approach. Give people a recipe and clear instructions, but they’ll still want you to do it because you add some “magic” or they are just plain lazy. Or, maybe your cookbook has great ideas but it’s still a bit hard to implement no matter how clearly it’s written.

When I wear my internet marketing hat, the free model can work well or it can be a big turd. I do give a lot out to the internet marketing community for free. But, much of my internet marketing revenue comes from selling cookbooks. I sell secrets and methods to make the cabbage.

So, I applaud the idea and I buy into it in many cases. However, “free” doesn’t pay the bills.

The main ingredient responsible for the success of these chefs is not through making their recipes available, but rather in the emotion and memories associated with those recipes.

The cookbooks are sold only after an emotional connection has been made with the audience via a television show, or first hand experience of their cooking.

Food is an emotional experience. Likewise, I believe, success is as well. Whether it be a cookbook from a chef with an established reputation or a “How I did it” book by a retired corporate CEO , or an insight to a methodology by a small group of guys in Chicago who are achieving admirable success these days, it’s the story and emotion behind the recipe, not the cookbook itself.

Daniel: Allow me to fix your analogy. They don’t give away the food because of the material costs and the additional labor necessary beyond the recipe. The recipe, however, allows anyone else with the necessary skills to build it into a working meal. Source code IS the recipe. The meal would be customization, installation, and hosting.

recipe:source::meal:hosting

Sounds like great advice that 37 signals isn’t willing to do.

@Daniel nothing new, just Google Analytics

Daniel, your analogy is not accurate. Recipe is the algorithm, meal is the code.

For example, I can explain briefly how lossless codecs work to my niece and he will probably get it. If he ends up in a programming job, he might remember some ideas. However, unless he practices as much as I did, he will not produce the same quality code for encoding high quality sound.

That is similar to a recipe from a star chef. You can replicate or improve the dish only if you have the skills to do so. Most of the great chefs might publish their super secrets, but it is the experience of their team in executing those recipes that sets them apart, not only their recipes alone.

This exposure gives the public the illusion that the chefs are being open and giving away all the secrets. They are describing what they do, not how they do it, which is the hard part.

@Britt:

Oddly enough I’d say on the free vs paid thing that a lot of the time the documentation on the free services is shitty. Maybe it’s because developers often would rather spend their time solving problems than writing documentation, but just my $0.02.

Want to make your own “cookbook”, or any kind of book. Check out blurb.com (it’s a rails site as too =)

The way you ask your question (“How can you give away your formula, your secrets, your recipes?”) nostalgically reminds me of Kathy Sierra… sigh. Maybe you can win her back one day… Meanwhile, keep up your great work & blog!