Re: OpenSource & the problem of professional support

Hello, On 05/27/2002 05:17 PM, Björn Schotte wrote:

Hi folks, [please *don't* see this as commercial spam. I only want to stress the topic "OpenSource & no mandatory support" which is running around in the heads of IT decisioners and often the reason why they prefer proprietary products.] besides the very great support from mailing lists, newsgroups and tutorials customers often have a problem when hearing the word "OpenSource". They often think "OpenSource, no good support".

And where is the evidence that isn't true? Björn, I think the problem is deeper. It is just not a matter of providing paid support, but rather of providing "good support" as you say. I am not saying that you do not provide good support, the problem is that people do not know about it, because that do not know you. Who is ThinkPHP? Where they are? What they do? What I mean is that the market does not know you even if you can provide the best support they may want. In the non-Open Source world support and consulting companies bet on advertising. This helps them stand out from the crowd, because in the IT decisioners minds they think that some company that bets on advertising is because they committed to provided proper support and certainly have (well paid) qualified professionals that are ready to scale up to the client needs. The bottom line is the obvious: you need to make yourselves visible to your target market or else the potential customers will not come to you. There are plenty of ways to do that, one of them is to advertise yourselves where your potential customers are. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos