Open Sourcing a Vertical Market Application?

Posted by Cliff on Wednesday November 5, 2003 @12:30PM from the open-source-in-a-high-rise-nich dept.

BigCanOfTuna asks: "The company I work for is considering the possibility of turning over one of thier enterprise applications to the open source community. They are doing this for a number of reasons including raising thier profile in the OS community, developing relationships with other Energy companies that would be willing to hire us as consultants, and of course just for good will (if there is such a thing in business!). Since the application is very specific to a vertical market, can one expect to see the same results that other open source projects see? Are there any other successful OS projects out there that are geared to a specific niche?"

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Rifles and shotguns by Mattcelt · 2003-11-05 12:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think you'll be surprised at how many will want to use your application. There are usually some surprising consistencies between business types which may not occur to those who haven't worked in each. So don't be surprised if your application which was made for an energy company becomes, with a tweak or two, very popular among, say, watch manufacturers.

One of my favorite ideas in marketing was always that you will almost always hit a larger market than your target, no matter how specialized your target. Like Avon's skin-so-soft, for instance. You know, the mosquito repellant?