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How To 'Sell' Open Source Software
An anonymous reader writes "Have we missed the boat in terms of selling Linux to the average Joe? The writer of this article at NewsForge certainly thinks so. He points out that most people don't yet get the idea of a free operating system, and that the best way to start winning them over is to provide free software for Windows, such as OpenOffice.org." This sentiment isn't new, but unlike a lot of commentators, the writer in this case is in a good place (as a retailer who's tried selling Linux-equipped systems) to observe the man-on-the-street reaction to Free operating systems as of 2003.
How about to support the developers that work to make your 'free software' in their spare time.
:P
They need money too.
Then again, I'm just a hypocritical bastard, as I've never bought any free software, ever.
Microsoft has numerous on campus events where they give out copies of their software, in particular their Visual Studio development package.
In order to increase market share, these are the people who need to be sold on open-source. Currently there are not very many college students in CS or CompE that use open-source development products. In order to stay competitive, open-source must go out of its way to recruit these youngsters and give them the opportunity to try out open-source. This should happen at both the college and high school level.
This can be a real advantage to open-source as there are so many projects that these students can contribute on. It's a win-win situation. They get real-world hands on experience and open-source gets more coders and people dedicated to open-source philosophies.
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
after hearing about mozilla for a while and how great it was. I decided to dl it, and it really is 100 times better than IE. Now I have a machine running a dual boot...and once I learn alittle more the windows 2000 partition will probably go away. Most people don't understand the concept of free software. Honestly most people don't care. they don't know enough and would rather be able to call up microsoft when something goes wrong, but if we show them a superior product, that is likely to get a response from them.
Parts of the market seem to be missing the point that software such as a consumer level OS and office software have little value these days. You really can't sell them by and of themselves. Photoshop has value, maybe Access does too, but Powerpoint, Excel, and Word are just expected - kinda like a webbrowser.
Most non-geeks think of Office as Windows, and of IE as The Internet, for example. You sell Joe Punter a Computer, not Hardware + OS + Applications. The sooner little stores like this "get it" the better. If they set a demo machine up with a slick looking Gnome2 interface (no RedHat doesn't count as slick :P), OpenOffice, Moz, and Gaim, then put it beside WinXP + Office for $300(?) more, then people would buy it. Maybe it takes a certain amount of customisation that isn't in the current distros, but 30 minutes on art.gnome.org should provide a nice looking UI - and to most folks, the UI is the Computer.
Selling it to people with the "It's Free and Therefore Good" argument is pointless. Sell it with "It Works and Costs Less" and you might get somewhere.
Also, try selling SOHO networks to leverage that into places Windows Server won't go - eg, Linux Server + 3 Linxu Workstations (diskless/netbooting is even better from a TCO and upgrade viewpoint).
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Yeah but they don't pay for it. Nobody (for personal use) pays for the retail version of Windows. The corporate users are the ones spending 200-300$ per license. The average user gets it for free with the computer then upgrades with a friend's copy. It's that simple. Just count how many ppl you know that are getting their retail version in the store? not much I'm sure.
This guy is right on the money. A co-worker of mine recently had a conversation with someone on the topic of E-Mail clients. I recently introduced her to ThunderBird, and she loved it (She's an active Linux advocate). She showed it to who she was talking to. Of course, the topic of price came into play. "It's free", she said. You know what? I don't think I've ever seen a more confused look on a 50 year-old man's face. "What's the gimmick?" He asked. She proceeded to explain to him about OSS, and he just got more confused.
If we want Open Source Software to make an impact on Joe user, we need to ease them into it. Humans don't like change. We need to feed it to them with a baby spoon a little bit at a time, and if they have questions, try to explain it to them in the simplest of terms. "Thousands of programmers around the world work in their free time to provide everyone with superior software" will lead to "Why would they do that?" because when Joe user thinks of a programmer, he thinks of a glasses wearing computer nerd in a cubicle, getting paid to write programs. He doesn't understand the fact that programmers might program for fun.
I think we need to start some kind of a campaign. The masses must join together to provide something to Joe user that won't scare him. Don't try to explain everything to them, just give them a CD and say "Here, install this, it's better than Microsoft Office", or "Here, check this new E-Mail program out, it's got a really good thing for Junk Mail". If they ask "How much does it cost?", say "It's my copy, you can have it."
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I personally probably won't be buying any open source products off the shelves anytime soon.
I bought a copy of SuSE linux a while back at a store. Paid about $40 or $60, got a few CDs and a couple manuals. I figured it was worth paying for the manuals and not having to download a gig and a half of ISOs... but unfortunately I was wrong.
I got it out of the box, and spent a couple hours installing it on my machine. So far so good, the installer was pretty easy to use and it went pretty fast (took maybe 30 or 40 minutes, I think.)
I booted up and was presented with a somewhat confusing login screen, and here for me is where it all went wrong - right there I had the option to choose multiple 'desktop environments' - it offered me KDE, GNOME, and a couple other options (I believe one of them was X11)... for me, this was confusing. I knew what all the environments were but I didn't particularly care to have to choose one just to use the machine. I started up KDE, since I had heard it was good. KDE started up fast, and I was able to hop in and start doing stuff. Did a little web browsing, and it worked great.
I logged onto IRC using XChat, and eventually one of my friends helped me get my windows drives mounted... unfortunately, it really wasn't pleasant having to figure out how to mount drives. I either didn't see SuSE's gui stuff for doing it, or that was a major oversight. So, SuSE lost a point there.
Then I started listening to some of my music in XMMS. Good so far, it worked great. I minimized it and started trying out the various apps that came loaded with the distro - games, productivity apps, etc. This is, IMO, where this distro (and the others I've played with, to a lesser or greater extent) failed. I was presented with multiple types of programs for almost everything, and there was very little on-screen help or guiding to help me select the best software to use. And to make things worse, some of the applications did things that I didn't expect. Selecting Wine caused my KDE desktop to dissapear and be replaced by Nautilus (the GNOME desktop, or so I'm told), and I couldn't get rid of it, so my session was now almost completely useless. I couldn't figure out how to do anything with nautilus or close it, so I had to shut down.
Then I tried to play one of the games I'd played on windows - Tux Racer. It said I needed hardware acceleration support, and here lies trouble. I fiddled with SuSE's configuration program (YAST) and could not get it to give me hardware acceleration for my Radeon 8500. It claimed to support it but wouldn't enable hardware 3d. So I went to ATI's site and grabbed their drivers. I then proceeded to try and install them. The installer messed with my configuration files, and then told me that I needed the kernel source code so I could recompile my kernel. (!) I didn't have the sources and I didn't know where to get them, so I closed the installer. Then, I opened YAST again to see if I could somehow find a way to get hardware acceleration working... and it wouldn't work. To make a long story short, somehow the combination of ATI's installer and YAST totally corrupted my XFree86 configuration to the point where even the CONSOLE would not display properly onscreen. Goodbye, linux partition.
If the companies behind these distros want to sell Linux to people and have them be satisfied customers (I have no problem supporting developers, but I wasn't happy with what I got for my money.), I think they need to work more on focus.
The average user doesn't need 3 CDs of stuff that he or she will probably never use. Include one good office suite, and make it easy to download the other ones if you ever need them - that's not hard to do! Do the same with other software... I don't think the average user needs to be confronted with multiple desktop environments, editing configuration files, and discerning the meaning of confusing application names. I know some distros are really good at being accessible, but there were only two distros at the store I visit
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I have a weird case - a project for a local government agency is being stonewalled by the 'official' IT department/subcontractors who want to control all software used anywhere in the govt. I'm told we can get around thier clutches (I'll leave the reasons why out for now) by buying some software we can use for internal operations, then, once that's in the door, we can try to get the software exposed to the internet so our 'customers' can use it as well. But I have to buy it. If I develop it (using open source) then the whole thing falls apart. Must be bought.
It's a Content Management project, so I'm hoping to pick an open source solution and offer the developers some cash if they give us a bill of sale.
Silly reason, but it's one that I've come across for why you might have to buy free software. Buy=product. Free software = custom development. We can buy products but we aren't alowed to develop solutions. Go figure.
closed minded is as closed minded does
He very happy with my software, Mozilla, and the server. He is also happy with the overall performance and the fact that the server has not crashed. Of course I also gave him an estimate of how much everything would cost without open source. Needless to say he likes open source now. Not only does he like it, but his employees see the benefit and they learn that free doesn't mean worthless.
Even getting a small business to use open source helps a lot to promote it because every employee that uses it gets comfortable with it and has some exposure to generate marketing buzz.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
"Yes."
More seriously... not even my boyfriend will touch Linux, because he can't play his Windoze-only (and/or Win-and-MacOS-only) games on it. He's not willing to touch an emulator. He doesn't want to use a piece of software that makes finding user-friendly software difficult. (Sorry, to you and I, 'bash' or 'grep' is user-friendly. Not so to him.) He doesn't want to use a piece of software that is so incredibly inconsistent that there is NO ONE WAY TO SET UP A NETWORK INTERFACE. (If you're using a shell, do it this way; if you're using Red Hat 8.x or higher, do it that way; if you're running Mandrake, do it this way; if you're running Debian, hack it your damned self cuz you're "supposed" to know how, etc. etc. etc.). And so on and so on. I love Linux as much as the next geek, but we REALLY have missed the boat. Mac OS X has already done more for open-source software in the real world of Joe Sixpack than Linux (and even *BSD) will ever do, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but that's how I feel on the issue.
Joe Sixpack couldn't give a good god damn about ideology. To him, ideology is something you learn in Church or in Ethics classes, and has nothing at all to do with software (or computers in general). To him, the notion that software can be "free as in speech" sounds like a ridiculous, out-of-context anthropomorphization, like saying "My car likes it when I pet the dashboard. See? It's purring!".
And as for "free as in beer", which most OSS/FS also is? To Joe, Windows, Office, etc. are all free as a flock of birds, since you either (A) get them free with new computer, (B) can download them off of KaZaa, or (C) mooch a copy from a friend or family member.
The ONLY way that OSS/FS will ever make headways into Joe Sixpack's life is if (A) it plays all of their games (or as many equivalently good AND POPULAR games), (B) it supports ANY piece of hardware you can buy, including WinModems, WinPrinters, WinWebcams, WinDildos and WinKitchenSinks, (C) things are consistent (which probably won't happen so long as there is more than one distribution) and (D) it STILL manages to be more stable and secure than Windows.
Oh, and it has to look and act just like Windows, too, or he'll say it's "too hard". I'm serious. I've had people tell me that Mac OS (or Mac OS X) is "hard", simply because they grew up in a Windows household, and familiarity breeds a false sense of intuition.
Not to be depressive, but... well, this is your wake-up call...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
how do you pay your bills?
We sell our virile bodies on the streets. Obviously.
The coolest voice ever.
I have a quick observation that comes from demonstrating Linux to such disparate folks as a VMS database admin, an intelligent, 68-year-old man who remembers when he first saw an electric lightbulb, and an 18-year-old who grasps anything having to do with computers in seconds.
And the observation is this: Linux on the desktop does not give current users of Microsoft products anything that makes them want to leave the Microsoft world. Even the price argument fails, because people of even moderate means will tell you that the cost of a "loaded" PC isn't prohibitive. The 68-year-old said it was too much trouble to learn a new way of doing things, particularly if it meant not having Office and IE. The DB admin said it looked interesting, but she wasn't impressed with the availability of front ends for MySQL and Postgres. And the 18-year-old asked what games were available.
Friends, we should not be looking for mass adoption. Linux on the desktop is for inquiring minds, people who want change. Most users out there just want it to be easier or faster than it presently is - - scary, considering a blindfolded monkey could operate the Windows GUI. Can we fill a need for these people? Can we make it easier, and faster?
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Maybe I've just grown tired of hearing people ask when linux will become mainstream. I no longer care if it does.
I used to sell customers systems with an OS that cost way too much for what they got(no not an MS product) We developed using tools that cost a hell of a lot and didn't offer much more functionality then syntax highlighting. The systems just up and crashed at times and noone could explain it.
The customers eventually got mad about the stability of the system. So we're replacing it. Linux, Mysql, php, apache and a whole lot of custom modules.
So far in testing the users are much happier, the developers are happier and the over all systems cost far less which we directly pocket as profit. The customers could care less that the system is built on free software, they just need it to work.
Does it really matter if grandma doesn't use linux at home? In the early days it didn't matter that noone used linux for anything. People still made it and now it's useful, that will never change.
As someone who runs a small computer store and sells computer and software linux is a hard sell. First issue is that standard hardware you buy at wal-mart must run on linux. For the most part this is true but I have had people come back and complain that their scanner doesn't run or some other piece of hardware doesn't run. I also think the idea behind lindows is a good one. The everyday computer buyer doesn't care that linux is a much more powerful operating system. People want to use their Email and write letters run a spreadsheet and send their family pictures over the net. Yes, this can all be done on Linux but not as easy as on a windows box. Until this changes Linux will be primarily used by above average computer users who want to learn how to program or want a server. Don't get me wrong I am a huge Linux fan but once again the person who wrote this article is probably right. charging something like Lindows,Suse,Redhat is a good idea and makes the novice experience much easier while also allowing the normal everyday Joe to learn more about computing. I believe that once you understand the power of *nix you simply won't want to go back.
dear jerk,
one thing is certain, you (and people like you) do exist. i have to deal with people like you everyday at work, and I'm really sick of it. I work at an ISP tech support center. All my coworkers call these people idiots because they don't know what a mail server is or how to activate their webspace and ftp to it. Besides the admins and maybe one other person at my job, I am the only one who knows anythign more about Linux than how to use KDE. Does that mean my coworkers and friends are idiots? Answer = no.
does a air conditioner repair (wo)man look down on you because you don't know how it works, or know anything about it, besides the very simple UI. When you want a more powerful unit, do you buy a whole new one or learn how the thing works and upgrade it yourself.
why do you look down on people because they don't know everything you know about computers. why should they, it's not essential, or even enjoyable to most. people only use them because they are convienent and ideally, more efficient.
yes there are stupid people. but people aren't stupid because they don't know anything about computers.
In conclusion, stfu.
Sincerely,
a dissatisified customer.
I post proudly, my opinion.
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.