OSCON Highlight: Making Sales While Making Friends
I am really impressed by Matt Asay's presentation on Making Sales While Making Friends: Lessons Learned from Open Source Businesses. I don't entirely agree with all of Matt's conclusions, but the value of material is great. Matt clearly outlines sensible practices and sets reasonable expectations for Free Software/Open Source businesses.
Some of the really sensible (and obvious stuff is):
- Don't expect people to write your software for you
- Don't just focus on price - focus on value
- The product matters most
- You must have good documentation - a pinch of documentation is worth a pound of technical support
I must admit that Matt is really interesting to me: he is doing much of the diligent and measured work (careful research, better formal engagement with his peers, regular consistent blogging, etc.) that I should have been doing for at least the last few years. All of this combines with his legal training and work with Alfresco (which, as another CMS, seems like a competitor to eZ), to make me feel distinctly more motivated.
Matt's slides should be available soon - I will post a link asap
Update
Matt has posted slides and notes at http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/07/making-sales-while-making-friends-my.html
Link Summary
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Posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 10:28
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