Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Open Source and business thoughts

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Posted by Michael Feldstein on
Here's the thing:

There are a huge number of non-profits out there. Many of them
are very relationship-oriented like to deal with local companies.
There's no reason why the companies who are interested in this
piece of business couldn't do the same thing that the ACES folks
should do (but aren't really doing yet either):

- Work together to develop an ACES-style configuration of
OpenACS targeted at this audience

- Work together to develop a marketing message for that
configuration

- Have a conversation about coordinating their efforts to go after
different marketing segments (e.g., maybe one company goes
after museums while another goes after environmental groups)

- Have each company work hard to reach out to their own market
segment rather than having everybody pile up on the few
companies that come looking for an OpenACS solution.

From where I sit, I see OpenACS development shops
increasingly competing against each other for the same jobs.
The community as a whole is not being pro-active about
expanding the pool of potential customers rather than fighting
over the handful who find their way here on their own. Perhaps it
is difficult to do too much marketing before 4.x is finished, but at
the very least, it's not too soon to start talking about it.