Matt Westervelt, Asa Dotzler, Scott Collins, Matt Mullenweg on Tomorrow’s Open Source

Open source – wordpress, firefox, opensource is changing things

Introductions of each

OS projects on merits of highquality, free products

in 6 or 8 months – 80 million downloads of firefox

F/OSS on the cusp of mainstream
WordPress (thanks WP!) at the front of that

How do you market an F/OSS project

gonna hand over the messaging and the brand and identity to the volunteers – more vocal and more effective
millions of users can be wrong
cant do that with a bad product
why does the testimonial work? cause you trust that guy – its about volume and scale

how did MattM (WOrdpress) go from Zero to Hero
WP is an evolution of a product – when WP started it couldnt find users – he gave to friends – couldnt get people to develop for it

The key is user driven products vs. feature driven products
growth of firefox and wordpress – lg commercial players well funded doing it longer seeing their market share eaten by community, bottom up movement

Asa – Firefos is still in the early stages – hasn’t crossed the chasm

firefox ad in the WSJ – a fan of the product felt it was a great way to promote the product – raise $$$ to spread firefox by buying the ad.

citizen media – firefox ended up doing a NYTimes ad (more targeted – 8000 people – $20 a piece – 2 page ad in the NYTimes. The ad didnt drive downloads, the MSM stories drove the traffic about the ad

scott – wants to know if there are questions open source and how someone here can help propel that thing of value

neccessity for successful proj is modularity – can cater to niche b/c it isnt all in the core

dylan greene – blogging software 5 yrs ago – how does he make $ while open sourcing

potential vc wouldnt see it as a money prod

Scott – dual licensing is one method – mysql, trolltech (go Zaurus!)

value for value

give away complete product, cross platform, license a seat (one time fee per dev, not per app or bundle) and that gives you proprietary licence – everything but ship code – pick how you fund the dev of the community

pay the devs and fund their efforts
works for vc, business clients and keep in the OS world
if someone wants to pay per license fee they can do both

Do VCs understand open source – answer = YES

its a competitive marketplace
find a way to give users a voice, give them feedabck, get involved
some way to speak bask – so THEY ARE INVESTED AND EMPOWERED

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