Marketing the Code: why opensource matters
Being an opensource product does not mean you can ignore marketing. If you think about your code from the market perspective, your target audience is probably the community, being it users, developers, testers, or those writing FAQs and documentation.
Use Case: an opensource product
Given the fact that you probably have no money to push the masses to you using the classical marketing techniques, such as giving out CDs, T-Shirts, stickers, free beers, organizing workshops, paying people to write about you, the only thing that remains is the code, its usability, and usability of your product.
Even if you had the money and tried to push the masses, there is still your code, and your code is now open. You can not play the marketing games, you are basically naked. If you want the community to participate, you have to make it easy to participate.
Use Case: a closed source product
Now compare that to commercial software, or enterprise software, or closed source software. Few people have access to the code. Few people understand it, no people are required to actually market it.
Developers that are paid by the company to work on a closed source product will do their work no matter what the quality of the code is or what the usability is. Marketing and sales will do their job, they have the space (and competitive advantage) of manipulating the masses by not showing the code and pretending that it is actually better.
Being opensource is not easier than being closed source
It is actually worse, you are naked, and you have to be perfect body shape and honest in character if you want the people to look at you. You have to write more documentation, tutorials, FAQs and other things to actually attract people.
Being opensource is feeling better
You had to make yourself more usable in order to compete with the closed source software and you can bet your code is at the moment easier to read, easier to maintain and easier to jump in and collaborate. Your product is accessible to more people and has a higher probability of surviving in the market.
The Rules
- Make communication transparent and decision making visible.
- Make it easy to participate (write documentation, tutorials, FAQs).
- Focus on website usability (easy to find things, easy to study things without installing anything, screenshots).
- Focus on code usability (easy to download, compile, test, and debug, no dependencies).
- Focus on product usability (iPod rule).
- Focus on integration (Java at the desktop sucks rule).
Final Note: silently assuming that your code actually solves the right problem in the right way, not every opensource product will automatically become the best available product on the market.
May 15, 2006 EN, Opensource, Uncategorized