« The calendar never lies | Main | What are the odds of dying? »
December 20, 2005
We're all suppliers now (and customers too)
Open Source changes the relationship between suppliers and customers. This is one of the hardest things to pitch at commercial entities using an Open Source project and who have found a bug or something else they don't like. This email response from MarkThomas to someone on the Apache tomcat maoiling list serves as a good read through if you're uncertain about your role.
This excerpt should be a standard quote in any Open Source presentation:
The supplier-customer relationship is very different in open source projects. In fact, it just doesn't exist. There is no them and us. We are all users, we are all developers, we all provide support to the other members of our community. Everyone is welcome to contribute. Contributions can take many forms: Some people write code; some answer user questions on this list. However we contribute, we are all part of the one community and we all have a part to play to make Tomcat even better than it is today.
Posted by Matthew at December 20, 2005 02:12 PM
Comments
You and MarkT are absolutely right. I've said the same thing myself to users in the past, only I wish I could have phrased it as well ;)
Posted by: Yoav Shapira at December 20, 2005 03:27 PM