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

First, regarding whether companies or a non-profit organization
should do marketing, I think it depends on your definition of
"marketing." It's most certainly the case that individual shops
should be making their own glossy brochures, going to trade
shows, etc. However, one could argue (as Ola came close to
doing on this thread) that, in fact, Philip's book is one of the most
potent marketing tools that exists for the ACS. The kind of
marketing that would be appropriate for the community to do is
clear user-level documentation (which does not currently exist for
any incarnation of the ACS), summaries of features and
capabilities, and a few clear, general statements *aimed at
non-technical people* about why the community believes
OpenACS is an excellent solution for many problems. Individual
companies can then take this base and extend it for their own
marketing purposes.

This connects to Ben's point about vertical markets. As part of
the *engineering* task of developing a solution for a vertical
market (e.g., ACES), we have to do some kind of competitive
analysis anyway, however informal. How else will we know that
the solution being built will actually solve the right problems?
The community as a whole should develop requirements
documents for these solutions and then turn those requirements
documents into competitive analyses that can be used by
anyone considering using OpenACS as a solution within that
vertical market. Again, individual shops can then take this to the
next level.

Finally, a note about market segmentation and
anti-competitiveness. I never intended to suggest that shops go
so far as to agree not to bid against each other. All I was saying
was that if it makes sense for the OpenACS community to go
after vertical markets (and I think it does), then it makes no
sense for every vendor to actively pursue the *same* vertical
markets. The reality is that the shops that are participating in the
community today all have limited marketing resources. I can't
imagine that you'd have the dollars to market to more than one or
two vertical markets at a time. In fact, since vertical markets can
be futher segmented, I doubt you'd be able to go after a couple
*segments* of vertical markets at a time with any degree of
effectiveness. I'm talking about active marketing efforts where
marketing dollars are spent here, not just taking what comes to
you. Given that reality, it makes no sense for multiple shops to
pile onto the very same segments in the very same vertical
markets. If you run into each other and compete, well and good.
But for gosh sakes, let's think a bit about how to spread the word
a little more broadly.

The real problem today (IMHO) is not so much that shops are
marketing to the same market segments as it is that nobody is
doing a whole lot of marketing at all. Instead, you're going after
the same low-hanging fruit. So rather than competing from time
to time, which would be healthy, you seem to be competing with
each other much of the time, which makes no sense given the
size of the community relative to the size of the pool of potential
clients.

Let's not forget that, as Malte points out, whether or not you're
competing with each other on a given job, you're really
competing with the world of solutions other than OpenACS. If the
community fails to focus on that problem and target it
cooperatively, OpenACS will not grow its market share, and
OpenACS vendors will increasingly become cannibals, eating
into each other's business. That situation isn't exactly conducive
to building the level of trust and cooperation necessary to grow
an Open Source platform.