What Open Source fails at

What Open Source fails at

The story angle is that a senior IT manager had the perception that open source failed. This, concludes the author, is a PR problem. Well, I don't think so. This sort of manager apparently sits in his office and waits for some bribes to come in so that he can spend company money on expensive solutions nobody wants, but gives him a bigger pool/car/dick or whatever ;-).

Even if it's not active bribing, marketing people of high-price products make cold calls, advertise, and visit potential customer. This is all push-driven, because you can't sell high-price solutions when people look actively for one. They'll end up with a low-cost solution that does what they want. They'll be able to inform themselves.

What we really have here is a problem with the "free market" idea. A free market works when people are informed. It fails when people are uninformed. The information about open source projects is out there, just enter your query into Google, and you get there. Example: two years ago, we had an office move, and the new office should get a VoIP capable phone system. Just enter "VoIP telephony system" into Google, and Asterisk is rank three, just under Avaya.

Now back then, I suggested Asterisk to our IT manager, and he said "that's not for us", and gave some non-explanations to it. They had made an evaluation of Cisco vs. Avaya, and had chosen Avaya based on the soccer world champion ship sponsoring from Avaya ;-) (at least it appeared to be that). It turned out that the "that's not for us" answer was based on severe misconceptions what Asterisk is - e.g. supposed to be a purely community based software with no support whatsoever. Which is certainly dead wrong, but Digium doesn't have that much money to throw out of the window as Avaya (and yes: The user has to pay all this sponsoring, because the Avaya system price tag is three times the Asterisk system price).

So my conclusion is: We have a severe problem with the job mentality of senior IT managers. Hey, dudes, it's your job to inquire information, it's not ok to be spoon-fed by vendor representatives (they will lie to you anyway). And if you fall for expensive adverts, remember, it's you (your company) who has to pay for them! The solutions worth the price are worth the price because they don't come with an expensive ads budget. This will be always the case, so there's still a place for commercial software to thrive: in the minds of people who are too stupid to inform themselves. Or too arrogant to listen to underlings in their company.

What we could do for the benefit of the general public is an education campaign about how ads are evil, and why. A product advertised in an offensive way must cause negative connections with normal consumers - just because it's advertised offensive. Cold calls and SPAM can help us here, and the fact that open source browsers have good ads blockers might be the way to get the message to the user. Ads are not only killing e-mail, they hurt us. We have to pay more for less, because we have to pay for the annoying ads, too. Of course, all this inefficiency in selling products means "growth", because there's a big part of the economy which builds on the advertising money. But being inefficient means that other economies can run circles around this ad-based western economy.

Your frustration is showing.  Your initial analysis is reasonable, that the basis for this
article is the mistaken impression of the writer's manager.  Your relation of a similar
situation in your own experience is a useful analogue to the situation, and explains your
perspective.  

However, your assertion that advertisement is evil is not demonstrated by your premises.
While marketing quality does not map to product quality, this is a widely known reality, and
product research firms exist for just this purpose.  Your declaration that
offensively-marketed products decrease their perceived value to the customer base is also an
acknowledged reality.  Among your problems, you equate advertisement with internet page ads,
spam and cold-call solicitation.  This is an insufficient definition of the term, and
disagrees with the intent of the author of the article.  Beyond this, your conclusion that the
western economy is inefficient because of its dependence upon advertisement revenue lacks
proof, and your prediction of its downfall makes you look silly.  These are disproportionate
claims to make in response to what is merely yet another relatively low-clue article on "Why
Open Source Is Failing."

Please calm down.  Your boss might listen to you if you actually said things that make
business sense, instead of "The solution that doesn't have an advertising budget is obviously
superior.  Only idiots buy commercial software."

You mix up advertisement and PR; it's not the same.

PR means to tell other people that there is a product at all, so that they find it in their
inquiries. Advertisement is only a very small part of that. And from my experience, most IT
managers hate cold calls. PR is, e.g., the job that the Mozilla foundation did for Firefox --
making its name known to the public at large.