RE: [tlug] Confessions of a closet OpenBSD user

["James Cluff" <jc@example.com>]

I think we should not only help finance developers, but have an organization
to actively promote the use of open source tools to organizations who could
provide funding.

Many companies are interested in Linux and open source tools, it is not the
software wich cannot compete, it is the marketing.  No one is there at the
door promoting the products to the companies they have to go looking for it
and it is hard work.  Mysql or Postgresql may run as good as Oracle or
Microsoft SQL, some studies show faster, certainly faster than Microsoft
access, but our company for example has an installation base of about 40 to
1 Access to Mysql ratio simply because of good marketing by Microsoft.

It is going to take years to undo this damage and it really is damage since
Access is running over a WAN and falls way short of being fast enough.

People always nock MS software, well I guess their marketing and business
practices too, but there are people who can sell ice to the Eskimoes in fact
Oracle is facing many lawsuits as a result of over selling their software to
many government organizations in the us by like 10X what the customer
needed.  They deserve to be sued.

I believe most of the people who really know and understand open source
tools are not sales and marketing type people.  In fact they don't really
care about marketing at all, just doing what they like doing unbothered by
for example a customer.

I guess there are companies doing this for a profit and some who are doing
it as non profits already?  I haven't really researched it, but it is an
interesting topic.

Having a degree in sales and never studied Computers in college, I often
think that with just a little marketing and sales effort and technical
support many corporations would joyfully move away from the control that
Microsoft has on their busines operations to open source software.

I think that is why Redhat has become a household name in just the last few
years.

james

-----Original Message-----
From: jq@example.com [mailto:jq@example.com]
Sent: Friday, June 28, 2002 4:38 PM
To: tlug@example.com
Subject: Re: [tlug] Confessions of a closet OpenBSD user



On 6/28/2002, "Jack Morgan" <yojack@example.com> wrote:

>Which makes me wonder why we don't
>have a non-profit organization to channel funds from corporations to
developers.
>I mean there are organizations to standardize filesystems, defend
developers
>rights, etc, why not finance developers.

When we want to "channel funds" (most of us would call this "pay" but
different strokes for different folks :-) to Free Software developers, I see
no reason to run them through an NPO so that it can take a cut, even if
everybody there is a volunteer and the cut is purely in the form of
administrative overhead.

We recently wanted some additional features written for a GPLed product, so
we
just paid the author to do it.  No fuss, no muss, no NPO :-)


Jonathan