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June 15, 2005
Conversation with SpikeSource
This evening I had a longer phone-conversation with Scott Schwarzhoff, SpikeSource's Marketing Manager - and responsible for their partner program. I've often ranted (a bit) about SpikeSource in the past and how I don't quite understand how they aim to play nice with the Open Source communities of the components they "promote". Scott was very open in discussing this point and what he said made absolute sense and resonates with the experiences we had when trying to bridge the divide between the Open Source projects on the one side and the business interests of commercial customers on the other. They are (and have been) thinking a lot about this and indeed they must - since playing nice with the Open Source communities is core to their business.
So - just as a suggestion (not that anyone from SpikeSource reads this blog <cough>) but maybe it would be an idea to detail your approach more clearly somewhere on your website.
Posted by Matthew at June 15, 2005 10:39 PM
Comments
Some social theorists of industry structure have pronounced a rule of thumb: that industries face either up or down stream on the supply chain. Their troubles are in the direction they face, the other direction(s) need to be commoditized for the industry to function. The theory holds that the industry is defined by some narrative about functions, quality, measure and firms are then ranked by those and prices then fall out of that ranking.
If that model is correct then spike source is attempting to face it's paying customers with a measure/quality ranking and what ever they say about their other faces is just the smily faces, not respect, not a real relationship, not part of their strategic core.
Posted by: Ben Hyde at June 17, 2005 03:30 PM