RE: Charging the Charger

On Wed, 18 May 2005, Anderson, Kelly wrote:
> It's not where the money comes from, but IF the money comes. I think
> it's harder to prove to the market place that you can support a piece of
> software when you weren't the one who wrote it. It's just human nature
> to doubt such a claim.

There is a marketing challenge but it's not insurmountable, and 
probably counterbalanced by the premise that any support by someone 
striving to be an expert will be better than trying to support internally. 
It is a premise that requires some sort of track record - having 
principals of the company with commit privs on the project helps, being 
able to point to past work (even pre-startup) works too.  It's also, 
perversely, a situation where the more vendors there are, the easier the 
marketing job is, because it looks "real".  E.g., each Plone support 
company is better off with 5 competitors than with zero.

> I'm not down on open source or it's support, I just want to brainstorm
> on how to overcome such natural objections and obstacles. That is what
> this list is for is it not? :-)

Definitely!  And skepticism is useful.  These are all just guesses 
anyways; my sense is that model and "marketecture" matters less than 
charisma and track record.

 	Brian