[kwlug disc.] "people don't respect what they don't pay for"

[John Van Ostrand]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> imagine, if you would, that you're chatting with a fairly high-level
> manager who controls the IT purse strings, and the subject of open
> source comes up, and you off-handedly suggest that OSS is something he
> should consider.  and, being a busy man and not prone to wasting time,
> he says, "what's the business case?  give me some numbers."
>   
Well first, we tend not to find people with that short of an attention 
span. Any salesman will throw manufactured numbers at them that are 
theoretical and unachievable, or they leave out part of the equation. If 
the person is that terse and that concerned about cost the company will 
not be around for long because salesmen will take advantage of that person.

In my experience business people who use short term thinking are often 
losing money, or they are cheap to a fault. The businesses that I find 
that are long term visionaries, or who are looking for value are making 
a stable profit and have good cash flow.

Which one do you want as a customer?

> could you do that?  off the top of your head?  i don't think *i*
> could.  in fact, i think that most of us who are linux-heads are so
> comfortable in our belief of the superiority of OSS that we just take
> it for granted that our arguments should sway others.  but i don't
> think many of us are actually prepared with persuasive, snappy
> arguments if the situation arises.
>   
Businesses are starting to care more about agility. They want to bob and 
weave with their competitors, or hopefully ahead of them. I take the 
tack that Open Source means agility. If I want to alter how I process 
email, I write a simple shell script. That poor Exchange manager has to 
find, evaluate and request software. Open source puts the solution in 
place in a day or two. Closed source does it in a few weeks.

> busy managers generally aren't prepared to invest time listening to
> abstract arguments.  a lot of them are simply, "what's my dollar
> bottom line?"  and if you don't have a ready answer, the
> conversation's pretty much over.
>
> (i'm betting that those people on this list who make a *living*
> selling and supporting OSS solutions have those answers ready, but i'm
> fairly sure the rest of us don't, as much as we might like to think we
> do.)
>
> i'll go further and bet that i (and lots of others) could play devil's
> advocate and argue *against* OSS and make your life difficult if you
> were trying to sell me:
>
> you:  "well, first, it's free ..."
>   

Selling based on price is the wrong thing to do. You'll often end up 
with cheap customers who will leap from using your services to the next 
guys who's $5/hour cheaper.

Lead with a line like: You get more for you money.
> me:  "nothing free is worth anything.  you get what you pay for."
> you:  "if anything goes wrong, you can look at the source."
>   

Because there is more than one vendor of Linux distros competition 
enhances the service and drives the price down (thinking of Ubuntu, 
Suse, and Red Hat.)
> me:  "hell, i don't even look at *our* company's source, why would i
> want to look at someone else's?  and who do i call if something goes
> wrong?  where's this "linux" company?"
> you:  "well, there's not really a 'company' ..."
>   

There are plenty of companies that can directly solve your problems 
including fixing software bugs. That list includes but is not limited to 
"Me", IBM, HP, Red Hat Novell, Canonical, Linus Torvalds, some Indian 
consulting house, etc. Pick whoever you feel more comfortable with.
> me:  "no company!?  who do i complain to, then?"
>   
> what's that one sentence going to be?
>   
New and improved with 100% less evil than our competitors.
-- 

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-- 
*John Van Ostrand* 	*Net Direct Inc.* 	 
CTO, co-CEO 	564 Weber St. N. Unit 12 	map 
<http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=564+Weber+Street+North+Unit+12,+Waterloo,+ON+N2L+5C6,+Canada&ll=43.494599,-80.548222&spn=0.038450,0.073956&iwloc=A&hl=en> 

  	Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 	 
john at netdirect.ca 	Ph: 866-883-1172 	ext.5102
*Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware* 	Fx: 519-883-8533 	 

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