Open Source — Selling Software That Sells Itself

mrcgran writes to mention that LinuxWorld is running an interview with Alfresco's Matt Asay. "Open source is changing not just how companies make software, but how they sell it. Alfresco's Matt Asay explains the new sales cycle and the skills that today's software sales people need to close deals. [...] 'But you know what? We have worked with Microsoft on interop without doing any sort of a patent deal; as has Sugar and MySQL and Zend and these other companies. We work directly with Microsoft for a customer of ours to insure SQL Server integration with Alfresco. Didn't have to sign any patent deal with them to get that done. We both had a mutual customer. It was in our mutual interest. We both wanted to make money, therefore we did it. But the patent thing is a complete smoke and mirrors, I don't want to say trick, but it has nothing to do with interoperability. No matter how much Microsoft may repeat that, it has nothing to do with interoperability.'"

Is Alfresco open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

My workplace just signed an agreement with Alfresco. They claim that they don't charge an up-front fee for licensing (they just charge for support) - but their demo software stopped working after 30 days because the demo license expired. (So until we bought a license, the software didn't work.)

As one of our managers put it "this is the least open-source open-source project I've ever seen."

Re:Is Alfresco open source?

[rolfc]

The community version does not need a license key, but you used the Enterprise trial version. on the download page you can read "Please note this is a time-limited trial and by installing the software you are agreeing to our Enterprise Trial license, specifically that you will uninstall it in 30 days if you decide to not purchase the Alfresco Enterprise Network" If you want open-source, use the community version.

Re:Is Alfresco open source?

[morgan_greywolf]

Yes. What's on the Alfresco website is indeed demoware. You can get the open source edition from their dev site here [alfresco.com].

Re:

[mjasay]

Give me a break. This is open source in the same way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss, or any of these others are. To get initial access to the ENTERPRISE code, you have to pay, because we're not obligated to release GPL code to anyone who asks. Only to those to whom we distribute the software. Our subscription contract gives you absolute rights to view, modify, etc. I'm not sure how much more open-source open source you wanted/were expecting, but we're open source enough to appease an open-source

Re:

[pfleming]

To get initial access to the ENTERPRISE code, you have to pay, because we're not obligated to release GPL code to anyone who asks. Only to those to whom we distribute the software.

That's interesting, because I read section 3 of the GPL:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:...

to mean that you really do have to offer source to anyone who asks as long as they have a binary.
As long as you brought up RedHat they do distribute source code to anyone through ftp access. They are not obligated to distribute the binary to non-paying users.
Don't get me wrong. I thought the article was interesting and lays out a way that a company can use GPL software to make money. I find it interesting that there is limited time software.

What Is Alfresco?

[dch24]

So if you're like me, wondering what is being slashvertised today, Alfresco [wikipedia.org] is an open source content management system like SugarCRM.

A CMS (Content Management System [wikipedia.org]) or CRM or Wiki allows a large number of users to collaborate online, typically meeting business needs like product delivery, scheduling, Human Resource management, and internal business documentation.

Does anyone know of other similar open source projects? In specific, I'm curious if there are other projects like SugarCRM. I know about all the different Wikipedia projects.

Re:

[anticlimate]

Plone [plone.org] comes to mind as another open source CMS.

Re:

[doubledjd]

>>Alfresco is an open source content management system like SugarCRM.

I haven't used alfresco but would argue that there is a sizeable difference between cms and crm.

>>Does anyone know of other similar open source projects?

http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ [cmsmatrix.org] is a decent place to start

Re:

[gravyface]

A CMS (Content Management System) or CRM or Wiki allows a large number of users to collaborate online, typically meeting business needs like product delivery, scheduling, Human Resource management, and internal business documentation.

Not quite.
You might get away with lumping a CMS with a wiki (depending on the features of the software), but a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system would typically manage your sales/customer lifecycle where a (Web) CMS would manage your Web site and the

Re:What Is Alfresco?

[thule]

SugarCRM is nothing like Alfresco! Alfresco is more like products like Documentum. Alfresco is the solution for all those documents you have laying around your company's share drives. Drag those documents into Alfresco. It's simple, just connect to Alfresco using FTP/WEBDAV/CIFS (SMB). Alfresco will authenticate against almost anything. Alfresco indexes all the documents. Change a document? Alfresco keeps the revisions. Want to start a discussion about the document? No prob. Need to find a document? All documents in Alfresco are searchable. Open a document in Word and see the revisions and TODO's? No problem, there is a MS Office and OpenOffice plugin.

Alfresco gets compared to Sharepoint a lot, but from what I've seen it is much better than SP.

The thing that I'm looking forward to is wiki integration. Now that will be amazing. Full web content managed along side traditional .doc files.

Forget putting .doc's in Samba. Use Alfresco! I wish the word would get out on this thing. It is fantastic software that is badly needed.

I do not represent the Alfresco company in any way. I'm just a person that recently discovered it.

Re:

[bomanbot]

Does anyone know of other similar open source projects? In specific, I'm curious if there are other projects like SugarCRM. I know about all the different Wikipedia projects.

Well, of course there is this site [opensourcecms.com], whose content should be obvious ;-)

Some of the CMS systems I tried and liked are Drupal [drupal.org] and Joomla [joomla.org], but I am not sure if they match the features of Alfresco and such because the are mostly Web-based only.

Maybe something like Typo 3 [typo3.org] will fit the bill better, as it is much more powerful (and compl

Re:

[cyxxon]

Erm, a CMS and a CRM system are something totally different. You explained CMS quite well, so I will not add more about this, but a CRM system is about Customer Relationship Management. It is a classic big business tool, and often goes hand in hand with an ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning). Big names include SAP, Oracle, Siebel, ...

What it is used for is, well, an electronic version of an address book, and much more. You built relationships between customers (companies who buy from you), their conta

The one page version

[khasim]

http://www.linuxworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x_linux.c gi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/linuxworld/news/2 007/081607-matt-asay-interview.html&pagename=/news /2007/081607-matt-asay-interview.html&pageurl=http ://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/081607-matt-asay-i nterview.html&site=lw_general [linuxworld.com]

Re:

[pembo13]

Microsoft - of that i have no doubt

Article is horrible

[puto]

I skimmed the article, and honestly, as someone who was a software consultant from the mid 90s, to 2002, it reads like a consultant from Informix of CA from the year 2000 wrote it.

First, you never have to sign a patent deal to use a database with your software. I worked for a company that if you used our stuff, you could use Oracle, DB2, Postegres, MySQL, or MSSQL. Just depending on what you wanted to do with it, and how robust your needs were.

And for a great deal of things, MSSQL, ORACLE, DB2,

Comment is horrible

[schmu_20mol]

Care to use the normal font next time?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry I couldn't read your post because you've decided to override proper fonts, and add an ad in your signature.

SE != Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

In most software companies Sales Engineers and Sales people (sometimes called Account Executives) are completely different roles. The former are technical folks who run the demos, answer architectural questions etc., while the latter are the "social engineering" folks who schmooze the client, identify the true decision makers, determine discounts etc. etc.

It has everything to do with interop

[flayzernax]

Yes it does, if Microsoft OWNS you, aka "Microsoft SQL Enterprise", you are just a pimp and a whore. Two entities with a mutual customer indeed!

Anyone worth their beans in IT has run into their own Microsoft subsidiaries (lemures) that promise "interoperability" yet fail horribly to deliver.

Besides I do not want Microsoft's code its unmaintainable and all of the variables are named after Teletubbies.

Brand the sucker

[rinkjustice]

Open source developers need to brand their software more. Give it a personality and a cool logo, sell some mugs and t-shirts to generate some revenue, maybe sell an instruction guide (um, or maybe not). Throw up some YouTube videos that showcases the features (or better yet, the benefits for the user). I know it's not about the money with open source, but making a little cheddar on the side isn't gonna hurt.

Yours truly,
An open source fan

Re:Brand the sucker

[HappyUserPerson]

I know it's not about the money with open source, but making a little cheddar on the side isn't gonna hurt.

What's wrong with making money writing software directly? Why should programmers be damned to pursue a menial job while voluntarily writing software in their free time? Is programming for a living not a worthy occupation?

Re:

[rinkjustice]

Definitely, programming is a worthwhile occupation. What I'm saying is that open source programmers can attract more attention, and for longer, if they brand their hard work. Branding helps create appeal and loyalty for their software, and gives them a chance to spin off related products for a revenue stream.

Print Version

[thePsychologist]

Print version [linuxworld.com] of the article on a single page.

There are about six or seven of these multipage articles linked to on Slashdot each day. It took me less than twelve seconds to get the link to this one. Would it not be possible for submitters/editors to do this? Or is it that Slashdot has some kind of agreement not to do this?

two words:

[doti]

a-men!

Re:

[Hucko]

hear, hear

Re:

[cronius]

If people click on the article and immediatly click on the print version, they still get some ad-revenue. If people only use the print version they don't get those, and they might either put ads in the print version or remove it all together. And as you say, finding the print version is very easy, so personally that extra click doesn't really bother me.

Legality

[Any Web Loco]

It's arguable that linking directly to the print version is considered "deep-linking" and may therefore be subject to legal challenge.

Fascinating article

[theolein]

That article is worth its weight in raw platinum. The guy from Alfresco sound like one of the most open, decent and honest management types I've ever heard give an interview. The interview raised so many points that get discussed over and over and over here on slashdot, such as the need for sales people to be mediated by engineers so as not to give false expectations, such as the feeling that the propietry software models are not working very well because they are simply too expensive and place too much risk on the customer. He also notes how SuSE went south after the Microsoft-Novell deal, this directly from data on his own product.

The guy sounds like he would be a real pleasure to work for.

Technologies and not devmodels moving into battle

[Qbertino]

More and more I see OSS winning over in key markets. In fact I see the major conflict not in 'which Vendor do you use?' but in 'which technology do you use?'. Which is actually the way it should be. For instance: I've got a medium size web project comming up - a web-based B2B/CRM plattform - and the big figtht wasn't "proprietary" vs. "OSS" but "Symfony" vs. "CakePHP". The customer has some buddy companies who all use Cake, so I'm suposed to build the thing in CakePHP aswell.

What I find interesting is that throughout the entire evaluation and preperation phase the entire 'OSS or not' question wasn't even being discussed and allready had been decided in favour of OSS. Shrinkwrap software business is mostly a thing of the past. It's about how and with what extras and service you can deliver you software.

great quote about white papers

[spage]

"I don't think I've ever read a white paper that actually had much meaningful information in it. Most of it is kind of marketing garbage that people like me write, and that's not that useful."

Indeed. As he says, just let me download the software, and give me a welcome page, a demo site, a tutorial, or sample data that give me a sense of what I can do with it.