I had lunch with Will Winkelstein, VP of Marketing at Groundwork today and discussed some of the challenges in open source marketing. One particular issue that I found interesting (and really hadn't thought about before) is how open source companies should classify themselves. For instance, Groundwork develops and manages open source software, making it an open source company, but their products are for network and systems management. So which way should they position themselves? Open source or systems management?
Unfortunately for all you VPs of Marketing, it's not an either/or situation and therefore requires much more focused marketing messages depending on the audience. This is the case for pretty much all open source companies, you have to assimilate your products into the mainstream (to get customers) while still remaining a part of the open source movement (to engage developers.) Ultimately it comes down to solving a problem for IT staff or developers, open source may be the angle that gets a product in, but in the future I tend to think it will just become a checkbox in an RFP.
Previously:
Open Source Community: How to win friends and influence developers
The voodoo of marketing an open source project
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 28, 2005 02:33 PM
