Re:Why you should sell open source software
by witten on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @07:03PM
(#377036)
Just to look at one of your points..
> Definitely losing sales to customers with IT departments that know how to compile source code.
Quite possible, but I can say that I've gotten some of my best and most valuable feedback from these sorts of "customers". They don't pay me a cent, but they provide me with really good feature requests and bug reports.
Now you might argue that if the source was closed, I could get the feedback and the sale. Perhaps. But perhaps the savvy IT departments only install open source or freely available software.
> Definitely losing sales to customers with IT departments that know how to compile source code.
Quite possible, but I can say that I've gotten some of my best and most valuable feedback from these sorts of "customers". They don't pay me a cent, but they provide me with really good feature requests and bug reports.
Now you might argue that if the source was closed, I could get the feedback and the sale. Perhaps. But perhaps the savvy IT departments only install open source or freely available software.