Great post by Matt Asay on the honesty of open source in a business perspective.

24 Hours of Unstoppable Freshness!: “That was the promise my Ban deodorant made to me today. It lied.

Consumer products often lie to us, or stretch the truth (also known as lying). We buy this toothbrush because it will give us ‘brighter, whiter teeth,’ drink this drink because it will give us energy, or whatever.

One of the things I love about open source software is that it is lie-proof. I can say what I want about the product, hyping its benefits and obscuring its failings to convince you to use it. But at the end of the day, you can download it and immediately know if I’m lying.

To be frank, this can be frustrating. With proprietary software, you buy before you try. You write the check based on media, references, and a salesperson’s word that her product is as close to divinity as you’ll get on this earth. You rarely get to actually use the software in any meaningful way. It therefore matters a great deal how persuasive the salesperson is, and not nearly as much how good the software is.

Which is why the industry is rife with stories of enterprises buying software and then paying multiples over the purchase price to actually make the software work.

For open source companies, the software really does sell itself…to a point. That’s not to say that good salespeople aren’t important. They are. But they fill a different role in open source. They’re more about helping to demonstrate how to maximize value with the software, and less about how to maximize their commission from a bloated license price.

To the extent, then, that an open source salesperson exaggerates the benefits of her software, she hurts her company because open source companies only get paid for delivering constant value/service. If the customer never manages to get the exaggerated promise to materialize, their support contract will last the first year and then the customer will invest in other software. No lock-in beyond customer service.

Open source is a more honest way of doing business. It keeps you honest and customers happy. They get what they pay for, not empty hype. When you’re selling it, you sometimes wish they’d shorten the sales cycle even further by buying a little hype upfront, but I’m happy to trade a little instant person gratification for long-term customer satisfaction.”

(Via AC/OS.)

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