Failing is not an option…

When I read in Steve’s blog a posting about building OpenSource business a few thoughts came to my mind I would love to share:

Dos:

• Down to earth
  Whatever happens to your business no matter if good or bad – stay down to earth! Increasing downloads of your solution do not necessarily mean the breakthrough.
• Competiting with top dogs
  As we did and still pretty successfully are doing is placing our product right in the middle of the snakepit: where competitors like HP, BMC and others are making their money is a good and warm place to be for an OpenSource company.
• The community – your personal crystal ball
  Most companies spend lots of money to find out what the market wants a product to be like. With OpenSource it is much easier & cheaper: on the one hand we colelct change requests and enhancements by using mailing lists as well as the experiences and impressions our consultants get during their onsite workshops.
  Just to get it right: instead of spending any money on marketing research we spend that money in improving OTRS to keep it on top of the line.

Don’ts

• OpenSource is for free
  Never tell any of your customers that just due to the fact that your product is OpenSource the implementation of an OpenSource solution means lower or even no costs!
  Most OpenSource companies rely on commercial services and the money they are making with that. That is why customers’ will start arguing with you about that your company has the “most expensive consulting rates on earth” or even will call you crazy because of the day rates you offer for individual development and/or application support.
• ClosedSource vs. OpenSource
  Even if your customer wants you to provide him arguments why OpenSource is the better choice compared to ClosedSource, I advise you not to join that discussion. It is really a pain in the ass. As we all know there are good as well as poor tools on both sides…
  You should never take it personal

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 20:41 and is filed under OpenSource. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.