Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Open Source and business thoughts
I'm pretty convinced that the majority of the participants in these bboards have become members of this community after having read "the Book". Hence we have found salvation, or at least chosen to believe (brainwashed or not), in the supremacy of OpenACS... "Farkas's Three Conditions" above, explaining why ACS was innovative and thereby unique (it still is, to my knowledge), indicates that we have reason to believe. Personally, had I known of a better toolkit I wouldn't be on this bboard writing this.
I'd like to offer my customers the best solution I know and the solution I know best. In my mind there are no alternative solutions to OpenACS. So, if a potential client will not share that conviction I frankly don't need him. Saying no to a customer? This may seem harsh and stupid but IMO it's not. If I in any way so much as imply that other solutions (e.g., the Z-word) are comparable competitors to OpenACS I'm only shooting myself in the foot because that would be devaluating the market value of OpenACS which is the solution I want to sell. I think this devaluation will occur as a result of a re-active marketing approach since, by doing so, I'm accepting clients that seek *any* solution instead of actively picking the clients who need "my" solution in the pro-active way of marketing.
I agree with Ben when he says: "Companies should develop marketing materials, not some volunteer organization." That doesn't have to mean that we can't discuss ways of marketing on these bboards. But one thing we don't need IMHO is for the comunity to become a common voice speaking to customers (end-users who roll their own, sure, but not people seeking vendors). What we certainly do need is for the OpenACS community to develop the additional role as a "business association" of individual companies worldwide, as opposed to a centralized "company" turning to the customers and not to their different vendors.
The only way a centralized "Uber OpenACS TNC" might deal with global marketing would be to utilize the concept of "re-active" marketing, i.e., trying to please potential clients looking for *a* system. Using this strategy OpenACS would have to drag itself down into the mud and subject itself to the humiliation of being equalled with so called "competing systems"... Moreover, using this strategy, by necessity the Uber OpenACS would get pretty much involved with the "wrong" customers. If these were the only customers out there we would indeed have to make due with them... My point is that the re-active marketing strategy is responsible for the wrong clientele taking an interest in us in the first place.
The alternative strategy is the "pro-active" way of doing things. This way suggests that the OpenACS vendor actively approaches the targeted clientele that she supposes share the essentials of our philosophy. Several stories from the community as well as my own limited experience imply that non-profits constitute an ideal market.
I myself find the re-active marketing practically useless since I'm based in Stockholm (Sweden) and can only work with clients in that region. If OpenACS would do worldwide marketing on behalf of the community it would run the risk of creating an unsustainable situation where interested organizations around the world get the impression that OpenACS is a company that can meet the needs of a global market. Imagine how disappointed these people will get when they realize that OpenACS is no more (but to us no less) than an online club upheld by a few thousand members and a handful of companies supplying their local markets, and what's more, most of them situated in the US.
Remember that the fact that our software and ideas may reach a global audience doesn't make our market global since the task of providing a web solution to a paying customer is a physical task in the "real world", much like the work of your local plumber or carpenter...
FWIW,
