On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, Stephan Borg wrote: > Hello all, > > Two opinions that I would like to share with you and get some feedback. > > (1) Linux is Free, we all know that and who better to benefit from it > than Small Businesses. > Unfortunately, there are a couple of points which work against this > 'marriage made in OpenSourcedem': > (a) Your average Joe Business Owner most probably has never heard of it > before and/or doesn't even know Linux/OpenSource exists.
You'd be simply amazed at the number of calls we get from the whitepages entry in the phone book because people lookup 'linux' and we're the only ones there. We get these stats from internet and phoned orders but we also get LinuxHelp calls for the same reason (but don't log the stats). This is probably the cheapest way to advertise. > (b) Small business owners are wary/cannot comprehend that anything for > free because its free and there is ALWAYS a catch. Depends, some have been burned and some are cheapskates and on the other hand some startups don't mind burning money. It's quite extreme the variance. > (c) That this 'free' product (Linux) is being promoted by someone who > appears he's only in it to make a buck (ie me offering services). > Please comment/flame at will. Don't use the term free as they mostly think of "free beer" rather than "free speech". Pick something like 'open source' or even just 'open'. Still, you're right, we (LinuxHelp) continually have to justify why we have to charge money, a lot think the whole linux thing is a free service. > (2) Secondly, I've heard stories of/experienced certain businesses that > got left with Unix servers (whatever flavour) after the product/support > company went bust. Basically, they look well within their capabilities > but are unable to find reputable support people/companies that they can > depend on to keep the box going and eventually replace it with a M$ box > of some sort. Some of these people became my customers. Other > unfortunately, have gone to the darker side . . . :) > (a) How do you resolve such a problem and make it easier to find > reputable Linux support people/companies? Some sort of register rather like the Linux Vendors list on www.linux.org.au but possibly more geographically specific, not to mention UPDATED REGULARLY and something we can all point to. I know it can be hard but there's times when some are too busy and might have to refer customers to somebody else. > (b) How and where do you advertise such a niche service in terms that > your average Joe can understand? (ie if they've got a 'Slackware' box, > good chance is they don't even know they're running Linux - believe me). 'Non-Windows'? they probably have at least seen what Windows looks like and know that it's NOT windows. It's a problem we're working on too! If anybody has the answers I'd like to hear them. -- ---<GRiP>--- Web: www.arcadia.au.com/gripz Phone/fax: 02 4950 1194 Mobile: 0408 686 201 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
