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Friday December 02, 2005

Free software : Our new big bet...

Well, I guess you've seen the whole free software thing by now ;-)

Funny how most of the negative comment has been from the official media, and most of the positive comment has come from the blogosphere...

I'm looking at it from a pre-sales perspective (as that's my job) and to be honest it won't make much of a difference to me in the short term, but I think the long term is all upside.

I work in pre-sales and see the world as follows.

1. We will still be responding to tenders etc as we usually do. Nobody runs unsupported software at the enterprise level.

2. None of my customers have ever evaluated software using closed door in house resources. They are always POCS (proof of concept) bake offs between competitive companies run by us (pre-sales geeks). Can't see them starting to pay for their own resources to do a job that us suppliers perform as part of the 'cost of sale'.

3. If a few more geeks and techies out there start mucking about with our software and writing up answers to installation/configuration queries etc, then Fan-bloody-tastic I say. (Eg. Do a search on google for help installing php and mysql on apache webserver, then do the same thing installing php and mysql on sun webserver - both can be done, but it's a damn sight easier to do on apache today from a standing start using just the internet as a support resource... community/volume wins)

Jonathan is right on the money still, keep up the good work! ;-)

( Dec 02 2005, 10:49:12 AM GMT / Dec 02 2005, 10:49:12 AM GMT ) Permalink Comments [0]
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