'Selling free software' is hard. What a vendor 'sells' isn't open or free software. It is services. It is hardware. It is integration. It is training. It is support. Basically, it is time.
It is NOT software. It can be 'glue' software they write, or 'customization'. I worked for a company that sold VOIP PBX's based on Asterisk. That is what we did. We did list the software we installed on the 'sales receipt' as $0.00. We also listed installation/customization/etc as $$ amounts. Lots of potential customers baulked. They just 'didn't get it'. Those that didn't were happy. EMC2 / LinuxCNC can be 'sold' the same way. ... >From my experience, customers want to purchase 'solutions' to their problems. Yes they want it 'cheap' (and folks looking for open source software are typically 'cheap' oriented). Customers that are cost sensitive and just want their 'solution' to work, don't care if it is open or closed source. If more customers understood, open source software can give them more opportunities to get support from both paid consultants and the open source community. But normally they want to 'call someone' when 'they just want it fixed'. The open source community seems to need to develop a relationship with someone to be able to effectively provide support, so folks that just call when things are 'already broke' and they are in a pinch often feel 'ignored'. I can understand that feeling, but I also understand the OS community perspective. Enough pontificating. Time for bed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF email is sponsosred by: Try Windows Azure free for 90 days Click Here http://p.sf.net/sfu/sfd2d-msazure _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
