Just find the right service model
on
The Open Code Market
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm working on an open-source location search (Mobilemaps) which aims to create a collaborative market for developers/portals using it.
The right service in this case is geotargeted advertising for local businesses wanting to gain some visibility on the net. It's an extension of a proven business model used by search engines like Google.
The plan is there's no need for developers to be paid for their code, they just earn money by participating in the advertising service by operating the location search for their local area.
To follow this advice would be to completely fail to recognise your opportunity.
You are not a 'student programmer', you are the acknowledged world expert in the code you maintain.
A company would be crazy to hire their own programmer to do your job, so you have a good bargaining position. Charge them according to their size. If they are big they will be used to high hourly rates, and you should charge accordingly. As a company gets smaller it is more used to doing things itself so you should charge less.
You're missing a crucial point. Your data is much more important than how your computer works, and it's being stored in purposefully obscure data formats. These data formats are being altered regularly to ensure you buy new Microsoft operating systems and software.
Would you really give yourself no independent way of accessing your data except by the good will of Microsoft?
The user interface of Linux may never be sufficiently better than Windows to warrant a change by itself, but the ability to own your own data is an order of magnitude improvement over Windows.
True story: My wife was in the hospital maternity ward. This is a modern US hospital, not some third-world tent. For about 24 hours, they had her connected to all kinds of sensors which were connected to a Dell PC running a data collection/graphing program on what appeared to be Win 2k.
The projects that do something new, something people don't know they need, are doomed to failure from the start because your typical open source developer doesn't have the resources to market the product.
No, you are only half right. Apache is a good example of where you are wrong - it had no commercial precedent, and is dominating what is now a global market. I don't imagine the Apache developers started with much in the way of marketing resources.
The reason you are half right is because the best way of marketing a product is to take a share of an existing market. It is simply that usually it is easiest to take over an exising market by copying an existing product that satisfies that demand, and lowering the price to zero.
But this doesn't preclude creating a new and original product that is open-source, taking a share of an existing market, and then growing what is later considered to be a new market.
Marketing resources aren't defined by money alone. Both the Press,and word-of-mouth are much more effective than advertising, and both come free if your product/story is sufficiently compelling.
Look at successful commercial companies that didn't have big marketing resources:
Google is an example of a highly successful company that spent next to no money on marketing, but had strong word-of-mouth.
Microsoft probably didn't need marketing - they succeeded based on a successful deal with another company, IBM.
Netscape was helped on its way by an article in the New York Times.
I think open-source developers will be much more successful with new products in future, particularly as linux gets stronger, because they are quicker moving than commercial companies, and often know their markets better because they are frequently the first customer of their product. They just need to find the right story to tell the world - same as any commercial company.
Both skylinesoft.com, and before them mobilemaps.com have worked on something similar. The mobilemaps 3D viewer was available in 1996! It was at VGA resolution, fit in 640K, and ran a lightening speed fractal landscape engine, along with web hyperlinks.
3D maps is an interesting market, because users expect reality from these maps and do not understand the limitations of the data, and why it doesn't look like real-life. One interesting application mobilemaps tried was mapping ski resorts, which attracted reasonable interest.
Mobilemaps, has since moved away from 3D maps to focus on providing an open-source search & locate engine that can be combined with 2D or 3D maps.
Because unlike the bubble companies they understood the web is all about finding information - not "content" or entertainment.
Hence banner advertising is a no-starter, because users are looking for information, and an irrelevant banner provides no extra information.
But a relevant text advert which matches what someone is looking for has a good chance of being clicked on and creating business.
In theory Overtures business model is actually better than Google's because it does not rely on technical advantage, but is based around auctioning adverts to the highest bidder + network effect: by offering more money to search portals from clicks than they would earn if the search portal set up their own pay-per-click.
Overture would have dominated the industry very nicely if it had remained a level playing field, but Google came along and improved its search technology by an order of magnitude over the others.
Now, Overtures business model is threatened by Google winning such a big percentage of the search market that its own portal customers combined cannot compete with Google. In this case no-one is prepared to pay high pay-per-clicks to Overture, and its competitive advantage from network effect starts to collapse.
So Overture is unlikely to use FAST or Alta-Vista as part of its own pay-per-click engine, and is much more likely to try to improve the genuine search results of its portal customers by offering them FAST/AV (quite possibly for free).
If users at for example MSN, instead of going over to Google to get good search results discover that the MSN search is good-enough (because its by FAST), then Overture will stem the threat and earn money from its pay-per-clicks at MSN.
They're up against it though, because Google have such a good brand now, and even if FAST were to have some arguable technical advantage over Google , unless its an order of magnitude advantage, Google's brand will remain number one and take a lions share of the whole market indefinitely.
Actually there's another reason for a physical business - like a restaurant - to have a web site, which is to be found in the first place. Think of it as a yellow pages listing - I'm sure you have one of those!?
"Location based search" services on computers and cell-phones will increasingly be used instead of yellow pages to locate businesses.
Instead of a flashy, expensive website, all it needs is a single page with a paragraph describing the type of restaurant and including an address, phone number, and opening hours.
They are trying to say that open software is the licensing model, or open software is the development process, and they claim decisions to pick software should not discriminate on these grounds. (Even here they have a weak argument.)
But of course open software is a valid feature of software! Its not just a licensing model, or a development process.
As a feature it has many benefits, so choosing software based on the availability of this feature, is a very good reason to choose software!
(And of course one Microsoft et al would like to deny!)
"Public entities should procure the software that best meets their needs and should avoid any categorical preferences for open source software, commercial software, free software, or other software development models."
However in this case open software is precisely what meets their needs.
What this lobbying group is really trying to say is: "Please choose software for other reasons than because its open or closed source."
But this is by itself a very valid reason to choose software - so what this lobbying group is trying to do is deny this choice.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm working on an open-source location search (Mobilemaps) which aims to create a collaborative market for developers/portals using it.
The right service in this case is geotargeted advertising for local businesses wanting to gain some visibility on the net. It's an extension of a proven business model used by search engines like Google.
The plan is there's no need for developers to be paid for their code, they just earn money by participating in the advertising service by operating the location search for their local area.
No you are a shrewd CEO when you give the college kids 20% :-)
To follow this advice would be to completely fail to recognise your opportunity.
You are not a 'student programmer', you are the acknowledged world expert in the code you maintain.
A company would be crazy to hire their own programmer to do your job, so you have a good bargaining position. Charge them according to their size. If they are big they will be used to high hourly rates, and you should charge accordingly. As a company gets smaller it is more used to doing things itself so you should charge less.
You're missing a crucial point. Your data is much more important than how your computer works, and it's being stored in purposefully obscure data formats. These data formats are being altered regularly to ensure you buy new Microsoft operating systems and software.
Would you really give yourself no independent way of accessing your data except by the good will of Microsoft?
The user interface of Linux may never be sufficiently better than Windows to warrant a change by itself, but the ability to own your own data is an order of magnitude improvement over Windows.
True story: My wife was in the hospital maternity ward. This is a modern US hospital, not some third-world tent. For about 24 hours, they had her connected to all kinds of sensors which were connected to a Dell PC running a data collection/graphing program on what appeared to be Win 2k.
I'll take the tent thanks.
Actually, I do agree that the submitter is wrong. A pork-barrel weapon system gets a lot more testing and funding than some ex-soviet aging lifeboat.
Whose pork-barrel spaceshuttle is sitting at home, and whose aging soyuz is still flying?
The projects that do something new, something people don't know they need, are doomed to failure from the start because your typical open source developer doesn't have the resources to market the product.
No, you are only half right. Apache is a good example of where you are wrong - it had no commercial precedent, and is dominating what is now a global market. I don't imagine the Apache developers started with much in the way of marketing resources.
The reason you are half right is because the best way of marketing a product is to take a share of an existing market. It is simply that usually it is easiest to take over an exising market by copying an existing product that satisfies that demand, and lowering the price to zero.
But this doesn't preclude creating a new and original product that is open-source, taking a share of an existing market, and then growing what is later considered to be a new market.
Marketing resources aren't defined by money alone. Both the Press,and word-of-mouth are much more effective than advertising, and both come free if your product/story is sufficiently compelling.
Look at successful commercial companies that didn't have big marketing resources:
I think open-source developers will be much more successful with new products in future, particularly as linux gets stronger, because they are quicker moving than commercial companies, and often know their markets better because they are frequently the first customer of their product. They just need to find the right story to tell the world - same as any commercial company.
Both skylinesoft.com, and before them mobilemaps.com have worked on something similar. The mobilemaps 3D viewer was available in 1996! It was at VGA resolution, fit in 640K, and ran a lightening speed fractal landscape engine, along with web hyperlinks.
3D maps is an interesting market, because users expect reality from these maps and do not understand the limitations of the data, and why it doesn't look like real-life. One interesting application mobilemaps tried was mapping ski resorts, which attracted reasonable interest.
Mobilemaps, has since moved away from 3D maps to focus on providing an open-source search & locate engine that can be combined with 2D or 3D maps.
Because unlike the bubble companies they understood the web is all about finding information - not "content" or entertainment.
Hence banner advertising is a no-starter, because users are looking for information, and an irrelevant banner provides no extra information.
But a relevant text advert which matches what someone is looking for has a good chance of being clicked on and creating business.
In theory Overtures business model is actually better than Google's because it does not rely on technical advantage, but is based around auctioning adverts to the highest bidder + network effect: by offering more money to search portals from clicks than they would earn if the search portal set up their own pay-per-click.
Overture would have dominated the industry very nicely if it had remained a level playing field, but Google came along and improved its search technology by an order of magnitude over the others.
Now, Overtures business model is threatened by Google winning such a big percentage of the search market that its own portal customers combined cannot compete with Google. In this case no-one is prepared to pay high pay-per-clicks to Overture, and its competitive advantage from network effect starts to collapse.
So Overture is unlikely to use FAST or Alta-Vista as part of its own pay-per-click engine, and is much more likely to try to improve the genuine search results of its portal customers by offering them FAST/AV (quite possibly for free).
If users at for example MSN, instead of going over to Google to get good search results discover that the MSN search is good-enough (because its by FAST), then Overture will stem the threat and earn money from its pay-per-clicks at MSN.
They're up against it though, because Google have such a good brand now, and even if FAST were to have some arguable technical advantage over Google , unless its an order of magnitude advantage, Google's brand will remain number one and take a lions share of the whole market indefinitely.
Microsoft should be welcomed with open arms simply because they provide great press for open-source.
What's the number one story a journalist looks for?
Conflict.
Bring Microsoft to the debate, and they bring o-s more publicity than o-s would have any chance of getting otherwise.
Actually there's another reason for a physical business - like a restaurant - to have a web site, which is to be found in the first place. Think of it as a yellow pages listing - I'm sure you have one of those!?
"Location based search" services on computers and cell-phones will increasingly be used instead of yellow pages to locate businesses.
For an open-source example look at:
mobilemaps.com
Instead of a flashy, expensive website, all it needs is a single page with a paragraph describing the type of restaurant and including an address, phone number, and opening hours.
They are trying to say that open software is the licensing model, or open software is the development process, and they claim decisions to pick software should not discriminate on these grounds. (Even here they have a weak argument.)
But of course open software is a valid feature of software! Its not just a licensing model, or a development process.
As a feature it has many benefits, so choosing software based on the availability of this feature, is a very good reason to choose software!
(And of course one Microsoft et al would like to deny!)
"Public entities should procure the software that best meets their needs and should avoid any categorical preferences for open source software, commercial software, free software, or other software development models."
However in this case open software is precisely what meets their needs.
What this lobbying group is really trying to say is: "Please choose software for other reasons than because its open or closed source."
But this is by itself a very valid reason to choose software - so what this lobbying group is trying to do is deny this choice.
The 'solution' from MS in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-065 recommends that you remove MS from the list of Trusted Publishers."
...at last we can all agree about something!