[Freegis-list] Defending the FreeGIS concept

[Paul Ramsey]

pradeep kumar wrote:

> But the fact remains that none of them would have
> given GRASS a second glance unless there was somebody
> in their midst actually using it!!

Which brings the whole discussion back around to the old truism: "bad 
software with good marketing trumps good software with bad marketing". 
Unfortunately, the problem does easily reduce to 'everyone go out and 
tell a friend'. Word of mouth only reaches so far. Proprietary software 
has the luxury of using large profit margins on software sales (each 
sale has almost no manufacturing cost) to fund proportionally massive 
marketing efforts which turn into more sales, etc etc etc. If I sell my 
product for $100K a throw, I can afford to field a team of face-to-face 
sales people, and the only cost I have to charge against my $100K is the 
sales effort involved in closing the deal.

The more I think about the financial dynamics of software sales and 
marketing, the more daunting the hill of acceptance for OSS seems to me.

-- 
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      | Paul Ramsey
      | Refractions Research
      | Email: pramsey at refractions.net
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