Interview

 
 

Andrew Rodaway about Marketing Canonical/Ubuntu

 
“A lot of money will come into the open-source movement over the next few years and that drives the marketing agenda.”

Andrew Rodaway is Director of Marketing, Canonical. He joined Canonical in July 2008 and previously worked at a company selling proprietary software. In this interview he talks about what changed for him when switching from a proprietary to an Open Source company. He furthermore discusses why a lot of money will come into the Open Source movement and how that will drive the marketing agenda.

 

Boris Kraft about Marketing Magnolia

 
“We make all pricing information available, so people don't have to call us up to hear about it. Instead, they already know the price when they contact us, which makes sales more efficient.”

Boris Kraft is CTO, Magnolia International Ltd., the creator of Magnolia, the Java-based Open Source content management system. He talks about the difference in marketing an Open Source product in Europe and USA, corporate blogging and Magnolia's marketing budget.

 

Bruce Perens about Marketing Open Source Software

 
“Open Source is different in that it potentially connects the customer and the product at a very low cost, because the customer goes out, they download the software, they try it, they understand whether it solves their need or not, and then they become your customer.”

Bruce Perens is probably best known as the creator of the Open Source Definition, which is both the manifesto of the Open Source movement in software and the specification for its licensing. Perens was the person who announced Open Source to the world, and co-founded the Open Source Initiative. In this interview he discusses why and how Open Source companies should market themselves, what he thinks about the Long Tail concept, and which license to choose as a business tool.

 

Oliver Nachtrab about Marketing SUSE and Open-Xchange

 
“If the only value proposition is open source - that is too little from the customer perspective.”

Oliver Nachtrab is former Product Manager at SUSE and Open-Xchange. In this interview he answers questions about mastering product management, how SUSE's marketing changed when it was acquired by Novell as well as the impact of Yahoo! buying Zimbra on marketing Open-Xchange.

 

Florian Effenberger about Marketing OpenOffice.org

 
“One advantage of marketing Open Source projects is that you can do a kind of honest marketing.”

Florian Effenberger is the OpenOffice.org marketing project co-lead, resonsible for global marketing and he also serves as the German marketing contact. In this interview, Florian provides first-hand information about marketing the OpenOffice.org project. He sheds a light on partner relationships, the marketing stunt for the upcoming OpenOffice.org 3.0 release, co-operation with Sun Microsystems.

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