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How Do You Sell Linux Software?
smelroy asks: "My software company recently released a Linux port of our business instant messaging product, but we are not sure of the best way to sell it, since to many people selling Linux software is an oxymoron. Users on each end of the computer knowledge spectrum associate any and everything Linux with free. Even when we tried to get people to beta test it for us they said, 'It runs on Linux so why isn't it free?' Another comment from a reporter in response to our telling him of our Linux release was 'So it is open source then right?' So my question to the Slashdot community is when is Linux going to be prevalent enough on the desktop that people will pay for applications and not always assume they are free? Better yet, where are the people who feel that way now?"
A good marketing technique would be getting your company's product posted to the front page of slashdot...
Maybe the problem is that the world doesn't need yet another proprietary instant messaging platform.
No offense, but IM is infrastructure that should be under control of a standards body, or at the very least open source and distributed, not jealously guarded by a bunch of companies each with their own extremely evil EULA.
Perhaps your customers rightly recognize this state of affairs. I know I do, and that's why I prefer Jabber for IM.
I and the people I work with purchase all kinds of linux software, from development tools to high-end graphics applications, to games. Perhaps your problem isn't linux, it's your product.
...You want free advice?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Hopefully never - when people use GNU/Linux they will realise that Free software is better for a whole host of reasons. Once they've had their eyes opened to this, then using closed-source proprietary software becomes a much less appealing proposition.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Perhaps you could release a scaled down version of the product for free to help garner interest and produce another version with more bells and whistles for sale. Also, I think the traditional model for making money off of "free" software is to charge money for support and services associated with implementing, running and maintaining it.
Just my 2 cents.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
If there is a compelling reason to do so. Lots of people have bought programs like Oracle or VMWare for Linux.
Expecting to sell an instant messenger to anyone is a different story. You have low-to-no cost competition from Lotus, Microsoft Exchange and Jabber.
Instant messenging is a mature product that has already begun to consolidate into a few big players.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Make Good Linux Software?
Do I prefer to pay money for good software rather than use some buggy unsupported hack? Hell yeah.
Problem is, there's a lot of good, free, open source software for Linux. If you want to sell something to that crowd, it better be damn good.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Perhaps is the server AND the client were available for GNU/linux you'd have a better chance.
Also providing a cut down 'free for ever' version would help get it through the front door.
???
Just because a program is open source, does that necessarily mean it has to be free (as in beer)? Why cant a company sell its source code along with its executables? I am only casually familiar with the GPL, would selling the source code violate the license? I think this could be a valid business model that wouldnt make the zealots angry. Perhaps even distributing the binary and source without a makefile so you can run it fine and also see how the code works, although recompiling and making changes is going to be quite difficult.
Users on each end of the computer knowledge spectrum associate any and everything Linux with free. Even when we tried to get people to beta test it for us they said, 'It runs on Linux so why isn't it free?' Another comment from a reporter in response to our telling him of our Linux release was 'So it is open source then right?
I think this might be an "urban legend", or perhaps your choice of sample for your researched was biased in some unintentional way. For example, Oracle is available on Linux, and it's very much a pay-for product. Oracle, as far as I know, haven't come under any serious pressure to make the Linux version free (speech or beer) - at least not any freer than it is on any other platform. I don't think anyone seriously expects MATLAB or Houdini or any other serious application to be free on Linux either.
If you face any expectation of no-cost it's most likely because MSN, ICQ, AIM and all the rest are free. You're better off positioning your product as something other than IM/chat and selling it on what it does that free chat doesn't.
"If you don't want the uphill battle informing people about your product being closed source, you should just follow the Linux business model of charging only for code custimization and support."
It seems to me that what you describe isn't the real Linux business model. One of the few profitable Linux-based companies is RedHat. They are essentially in the business of distributing a product based on other people's unpaid work. If they actually had made the R&D investment to create the GNU libraries and the Linux kernel, it's unlikely that they would be profitable selling Linux at the current price.
The real question is whether you can make money in the open source arena when your business is creating your own software rather than being a marketing and distribution company.
I'm **waiting** for a way to make money selling Linux-based software to small businesses; especially those that have hardware they do not want to replace yet again and have decided to get out of service agreements with their hardware vendors because they can no longer afford to upgrade all their desktop OSes every three or four years.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
If you face any expectation of no-cost it's most likely because MSN, ICQ, AIM and all the rest are free. No, I face an expectation of 'no cost' because the Linux distro disk they have for their new file server says that the software itself is free and only reasonable costs for media (the CD) and distribution should be paid for; like the days when the guy stood in front of your work's cafeteria with boxes and boxes of $3 software because the program itself was either free or some form of shareware; and often tossed after the first few game levels in many cases.
I would like to see "time-locked" shareware Linux software releases; and I bet some of the office software will end up like that if [ooooooh, ahhhhh, rays of light and whatnot here] "Linux on the Desktop" ever becomes prevalent. I'd also looove to see a lot of games - particularly MP games so you guys can go to the local LAN party and show off your latest RedHat/Debian box and then frag some of your boys - get ported because it would probably be like porn was to videotape.
Do I see any of that happening in the near future? Not really, and partly because I think not one of us can take the risk.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
This gets away from what people who wish to make money from Linux perceive their market to be - at least as far as I have been able to tell: support. I thought RedHat sold Linux because they feel that training and supporting users and certifying corporate support staff is a viable way to make money.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
--you offer it in different thresholds, and that's about it. Free to hobbyists, support for the payers. Software is worth paying for once it actually works as advertised for the customer, that's the pain threshold, that is usually classed as alpha or beta or full release-stable. Stable that is sold should come with the ability to actually get ahold of a human being in a timely manner for any troubleshooting questions or contracted/requested work on a feature enhancement, etc. Those with their cash transferred to you get their feature enhancements and problems bumped to the top of the line obviously. And the docs NEED to be written (the final draft) by an english major, someone who's task is to stand over the engineers once the coding is finished and it's time to finalize the man pages and docs with a clue by four until everyone is satisfied the docs are understandable and thorough and accurate. A small paragraph where every other word is an acronym is *not* a working doc to anyone except a coder. I've seen that phenomenon way too often with linux programs. Assume people who might be interested in purchasing the full release are not "all" coders, proceed from that point.
I know I pay for software for BOTH the convenience of having it on a quality made cd and ALSO because I then have a working dead trees manual that doesn't require me burning out my printer. I like the convenience of owning the cd, I like most of the time reading docs from a book, not on a screen. Some do, some don't care, that's just my "paying customiser" opinion. Free is free, a lot of people enjoy downloading constantly and compiling and whatnot, a lot more want the thing to work and be right there and easy to install (or reinstall) and have a reference manual. That's the part worth paying for, and keep the costs reasonable enough. This is like the clueless music/movie sellers. Instead of selling zillions of 5$ cd's, which they could, they make less money trying to sell 20$ cd's. Clue-less morons. It's called getting greedy, only works for a short time, then people do something else, yes?
Another thought, your program must be useful and functional to a degree at least two steps above whatever else is out there. Not one step, at least two steps better, or don't try to sell it.
Now that that's out of the way, I think it's better to just make your money admining linux in the commercial arena, then work on your custom coding and app development the same as almost everyone else is, spare time or allocated free time at your employers. The basic concept of "sharing" needs to be drilled into the bean counters heads as the long haul way to cut costs and get "more", but sharing only works if it's two ways. Everyone benfits by shared code, so the company can concentrate on building and selling their widgets. By using open source as the BASE of a company's IT, they save money. By finally bingoing that a little across the board sharing is what's allowing them to save money, perhaps they will cut some slack and allow a little company time to be used for your interesting app. That's the difference between leeching and sharing. Leeching-only as a concept is just not cool, either short term or long term. Your company benefits from open source in general, and they get first dibs on the product, useful for their business, and score brownie points as being a "friendly" and ethical company in the gestalt of society as it were. They develop a "good rep". With todays business climate, public perception is important. People are skeptical of businesses now, with dang good reason-a lot of them are shall we say less than forthright with their numbers and pretty dismal in the ethics department.
If there's no way to do this and you absolutely need to make your money off of your new application, then it must be customizable to a degree that large companies would pay for the application, it has to have a bona fide usefullness that is unique, perhaps security? That part I don't know, too many variables and wildcards. Usually in software there's the full release, then "release lite" to the non paying hobbyist public, that seems to be what is working now for some people. You offer the customized features for a customized premium in cash.
I have a collection of (closed source) Linux games. I buy them because there are no reasonable open-source equivalents, and I like to have them. Quake 3, Alien Crossfire, Jagged Alliance 2...
However, I heavily weight open source into my decisions. If there is *any* open source version (and free as in beer is also a factor), I'm far more likely to get the open source than the closed source version. Sorry, but I've had enough issues with the damn HZ and clock ticks breaking timing on closed source games with my redefined HZ in 2.4 and the new 2.5 HZ value (which, BTW, apparently breaks just about *all* old closed-source Linux games).
Linux is simply not particularly accessable to closed source, and there's a strong culture around open source. You can try to see your product, but remember that when Acme Software comes along pimping their roughly equivalent open source product, you may be up shit creek...
May we never see th
Ok, I think we could actually learn something here if we abstract away a bit to talk in general about Linux software. To me, as Linux is UNIX-based, you could probably get away with charging thousands (10s? 100s?) of %currency% for some Enterprise solution, if you kind of sell it as: runs on these UNIXes, including Linux. You're not going to get away with the shrinkwrap model on Linux, as you noticed there's quite a mindset against it.
/.) this way. Sell support, installation, training, and customization services, and you should do well. Then you can get the kids who love to tinker familiar with your product without them breaking any laws (as a few of them actually respect copyright), and they can then get the companies they go to work for to buy what they are familiar with. Probably not going to work in your case, but I think others could benefit from this sort of model. Of course, you could give away the client and then sell "enterprise-class" monitoring software to control how they chat. But then again, that's being done right now anyway.
;-)
Alternatively, you could sell services. That seems to be where most of the money is going to be soon anyhow, and that way you could still get away with giving away (most of?) the code. There are several examples (too lazy to find & list) of companies who are making money (and who have been featured on
I'd suggest circulating your resume.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
"All of the following companies do this, with more or less success:"
I took a quick look at sendmail.com and noted it is privately held so its profits (or lack of them) don't have to be published. I note that Red Hat is one of their investors, thus the company is supported indirectly through the unpaid efforts of the GNU and Linux contributors. I haven't looked at the others in your list.
It would be nice to see some hard data indicating profitability and comparing it with closed source companies.
"I think CNBC has given people the idea that the only companies that matter are publicly traded ones."
Well, if you have a program about investments it doesn't make much sense to cover companies that the general public can't invest in.
know the differences between most major licenses, and they know that not everything that runs under Linux is GPL'ed.
Must agree, though, that there needs to be a larger demand than under proprietary OS'es, especially when there is so much that is free for Linux. I myself, bought a copy of the commercial version of Tuxracer for Linux. So I guess "here" is the answer to where are people like that.
It's all going according to
Whan was the last time someone brought some windows software, well maybe a few games but seriouly home users never buy software if they can help it, and companies will try to put of buying software for as long as possible.
Winzip, Textpad, trial software etc...
(BTW I don't own a single pireted piece of software)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
...and just sell your product as a product that happens to run on Linux as well as other platforms. It can run on other platforms right? Keeping your product limited to just one platform isn't "A Good Idea" in this day and age.
You really need to think about why anyone would, from a business perspective, bother with your product at all. If the only card you've got is "IM using Linux", then just check out now while you've still got your money. That's not a strong card to play in this market.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I actually spend far more on Open Source software than I ever have on Closed Source software. At minimum I buy every other SuSE Pro release (at $80 each), and it's quickly becoming every release as my income increases. Additionally, I'm much more likely to throw down some cash for a game that's ported to Linux, so long as it's at all interesting to me.
For a Windows-only game, though, it's got to be something that I ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE before I'll even think about buying it, and even then there is some debate before I do. In fact, only 2 games have overcome that barrier since I started using Linux almost 3 years ago: Morrowind and Diablo 2, and I only got D2 because it was on sale.
Additionally, I have no intention of upgrading beyond Win98SE, and my last bit of pirated software (MS Office 2k) hit the round file in January. The only non-OSS apps I use on Windows are Nero and PowerDVD, both of which were bundled with hardware.
I know plenty of other people that feel the same way. Unfortunately for you, though, I don't have even the vaguest interest in IM, free, proprietary, or otherwise. But the market does exist, and it's growing. You just need to find some people who are a little more serious about it than those who download a couple of ISOs just so they can say they run Linux.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I was giving them the value of the doubt (based on the fact that I didn't do my homework). The fact that they have lost money makes the case for companies making a profit off of open source that much more difficult to make.
What that means is that there is already a market, an you can sell software right now. (Whether you can sell enough to cover your costs, I can't say.)
The catch, though, is that some types of software are more sellable than others. Games don't really compete with each other (you can't just substitute one game for another), which can't be said for an "instant messaging product." It sounds like you're competing with a lot of free software, whereas Loki was not.
Furthermore, communication tools are different from games in that the values that make people flock to Free/Open software, are at stake. What I mean is: nobody wants to be locked into your proprietary communication product. That is exactly the kind of thing that needs to be commoditized and made transparent, unlike a game. Few people will ever feel "stuck with" a game, so buying a proprietary game isn't risky. But for a communication product, the risk is so high, that your product would really have to be outrageously good for me to even consider buying it.
So maybe the question of "How do you sell Linux software?" is answered with "By selling a product that doesn't make users feel at risk from proprietary lock-in."
That, of course, only applies to users who use Linux because of the Freedom advantage. Those who use Linux simply because it's cheap, or because it works well, are really just like the users of any other platform. If you're targeting those users, then your question is equivalent to "How do you sell software to computer users?" And my answer is: Beats the hell out of me, that's why I still have a boss. ;-)
Oh.. another idea: I haven't heard of this working yet (how's that for a disclaimer?!) but you can in theory sell non proprietary software, using methods such as Street Performer Protocol. i.e. You get the money in advance, then release it as Free. That removes the lock-in threat.
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