There are no salesmen in an Open Source project.
Philip Copeman
There are no salesmen in an Open Source project!
Everywhere you go in the media nowadays you hear about the benefit of free and Open Source software.
Many first time visitors to TurboCASH project find it frustrating that there is Noone who jumps up to "help" you the moment they come to the web site. They have simple questions to ask like" . Will TurboCASH work for me? Can I extend it to meet my problems? Will there be help for me if I get stuck?
All they hit is a web site that offers to let you download the software, read the help and pay for someone to address your problems. What happened to the friendly salesmen that are there to assist "customers". If you are used to walking into a company and getting "free" service, your first encounter with an Open Source software project will be frustrating to you. This is even worse if you have just shelled out $ 50 for a CD and you now need some call centre "Service", all you meet is another opportunity to pay more money!
Salesmen are those guys in the dark suits (Usually designer labels) that drive round to your company in a Merc or BMW, they buy you lunch, take you to their company boxes at the local stadium and they discuss your system requirements. They do this because they know that down the line they will take you for the Thousands that let you continue to pay for their suits. Call centre operators are Salesmen that have not yet cracked the big time. It is a fact of commercial software houses that less that 10% of the revenue generated goes back to research and development. The rest of the money is spent on those lunches, the salesmen's bonuses and the ads that tell you what a great decision you made to buy their program. The hundreds of Millionaires made at Microsoft and Apple were not developers, they were salesmen!
An Open source project is very different. Its more like a library or a search engine. You are free to enter whenever you like and free to leave whenever you like. There is Noone tracking you or checking that you have not copied the technology or paid your fees. You can walk out of the door with a full copy of the project on your disk -free! To those of us who have been in them for a while, we know that it is a pointless exercise to try and get members of the project to do things for Free. Those that don't know this come in, bang around and leave a bit wiser and the next time they return the are ready to take advantage of the offerings.
We no longer have to ask or answer the question "But how do you make money out of an Open Source project?". We are all here for the money, all sharing that 90% that would have been spent on the ads and the suits. No one controls our users, developers, consultants, accountants or territory agents. They come and go at will. Strangely however you will find them here at the TurboCASH project 24/7. Each of them knows that their personal power in the project is determined only by the contributions that they make! Take your finger off the button and there are three others waiting to jump into your space.
This mix makes for a very powerful development cocktail.
Those of us here, believe that All companies should be involved with Open Source Software. The benefits of participating and contributing extend to corporations as well as individuals. Only by participating will this become apparent.
We are zeaolats for software freedom. We do not partner with those parties who do not adopt these strategies. That is not a concrete rule. We do not exclude anyone. Here at TurboCASH we even support Microsoft Windows! Our main development environment - Delphi - is a MS associated company! This gives us sleepless nights! There are obviously a lot of compromises to be made and we have to take a pragmatic approach, but we strive towards freedom for the users.
The good news is that the world is filled with companies that have this approach. I often have software companies approaching the TurboCASH project, giving us free offerings, but we turn them down because "FREE" is not "Open Source". TurboCASH is a GNU GPL project. It is the most left wing of the copyleft licenses. It is the licence that gives the most guarantees to the users of the software. The rest of us are just the facilitators. The users and their needs is after all what this is about.
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So what do you do if you absolutely "need" someone to "sell" to you?
I often have newcomers, who are used only to dealing with Salesmen. They get frustrated when they arrive at the TurboCASH project and nobody jumps up to help them.
It may be that you are new to these concepts or that you are not familiar with the benefits involved. The good news is that we ARE here to help you. However this is a coin operated business. To get this help you need to insert money. Do that and watch these guys light up!
On our web site is a list of many consultants that will help your with the implementation of TurboCASH and Open Source Software. They are all independents. So if you want them to come around and tell you if TurboCASH will or will not work in your business you will have to pay them to do so.They will also show you the many other Open Source projects that are also available. When you make a move towards TurboCASH and Open Source you get not only the FREE benefit of the TurboCASH community, but access to the thousands of others in other OS projects with similar freedom.
Personally I will provide this consulting for a fee of R 5000 per day plus traveling and accommodation costs. I would prefer to restrict this to the Cape Town area and introduce you to many of the other capable members of this site for help in other cities. Please beware that I am not here to sell you anything, but rather to introduce you to the possibilities.
If this is all a bit too much for you and you may really need someone to do this for you for nothing. You may have a screaming desire to have someone give you "Free" objective advice. Then I suggest that you get one of those Suited Software Salesmen from a commercial company to wine and dine you. Order the prawns. But beware - there is no such thing as a Free Lunch!
philipdc
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Philip Copeman
14 Oct
Help needed by some lateral thinkers.
Ok if you have digested the above, and understand what a salesman is,
and why they are valuable, let us start to work out how we can
accommodate these Dark suited wonders into our efforts.
We need to make way for a group of people, not particlurarly technicaly
minded, who are driven not by the desire to change the world, but by
the desire to change the financial position of their own lives. We have
to offer them somnething to sell.
This will give us problems in that our desire to provide everything
free keeps squashing their efforts. They end up rather selling inferior
software, simply beause they can.
It is time for us to stop competing on price and start competing on
quality.
Here are my openers:
1) the first product we obviously have is services. We are able to come
into a company and provide them with open source software and services,
particularly TurboCASH. This has to be charged, probably on a per user
basis. We will come into a company and "kit them out with Open
Source", particulary TurboCASH. We need to offer this in packaged
solutions to salesmen who can then go forth and do this. Novel has
begun this with Suse, but we need to offer it as a Windows solution.
We need to package this - create an Open Source "MCSE" - and have a
standard package that a salesmen can go out and convince companies to
use our services.
We are going to need seminars and coordniation of pricing and
implementation. Can someone help me put this together?
2) We need to partner with hardware suppliers. By providing free
software we are making the cost benefit of a hardware upgrade far more
attractive.
3) We need to hang back in our obsession to give away free software,
start to create value propositions that Salesmen (simple people who are
not techie fanatics like us) can partake in the OS revolution and meet
their financial goals.
By offering these guys easy entry to OS, we can get them working for
us. They don't have to go out and join IBM or Microsoft, they can join
Open Source.
Anyone with some ideas or a plan on how we get them to do this?
philipdc
Help needed by some lateral thinkers.
Ok if you have digested the above, and understand what a salesman is,
and why they are valuable, let us start to work out how we can
accommodate these Dark suited wonders into our efforts.
We need to make way for a group of people, not particlurarly
technically minded, who are driven not by the desire to change the
world, but by the desire to change the financial position of their own
lives. We have to offer them something to sell.
This will give us problems in that our desire to provide everything
free keeps squashing their efforts. They end up rather selling inferior
software, simply beause they can.
It is time for us to stop competing on price and start competing on
quality.
Here are my openers:
1) the first product we obviously have is services. We are able to come
into a company and provide them with open source software and services,
particularly TurboCASH. This has to be charged, probably on a per user
basis. We will come into a company and "kit them out with Open
Source", particulary TurboCASH. We need to offer this in packaged
solutions to salesmen who can then go forth and do this. Novel has
begun this with Suse, but we need to offer it as a Windows solution. So
he goes around not offering to install free software (no more install
fests). He goes round to make a deal, to get the company to pay for
someone to comein and install Open Source.