 ... or "why Open Source is like WalMart":
"The nation has two kinds of retailers these days: those bracing for a grim holiday season, and Wal-Mart ... We know that Mom’s not going to cancel Christmas. We’re
committed to cutting the cost of Christmas. It’s what we do.”" (NYTimes)
I really think we're lucky to be in the Open Source world right now. We can be the Walmart of the technology sector. As people cut back, they're not cancelling web projects but they are looking for quality at much lower prices. Whether you're building a business on an OS platform or if you're a developer selling OS services, here's 5 reasons to be bullish right now:
1) Businesses are Comfortable Buying Open Source Websites
Witness Lifetime Entertainment paying $10 million for a Drupal site or BleacherReport.com getting multi-million dollar funding after starting life on Joomla. In a recession, using Open Source is one sign that a business is frugal and wise with its resources.
2) Investors are Comfortable with Open Source Business Models
Witness Drupal's lead developer getting a $7 million investment and Open-Xchange getting $9 million. One of the most successful OS companies, Automattic has no central office and all its employees work remotely from home, only meeting up a couple times per year as a company.
3) License Fees are Hard to Justify in a Recession
We've had about a dozen people sign up for our Joomla training sessions because they're fed up of paying Microsoft $XX,XXX per year in order to use their Content Management systems.
4) Agency Fees are Hard to Justify in a Recession
Some of my webdesigner friends are reporting an upturn in business from large, branded companies. Instead of paying agencies $300 or $400 per hour, they're realising they can get the same quality of work from a smaller firm at 25% of the price. Lots of these companies already use Wordpress for blogs and Drupal or Joomla in-house:
5) Open Source is Increasingly Mainstream
I see this on a local level with my wife's school district moving everyone to Open Office and all the way up to multinational companies with Google's OS competitor to the iPhone. Take a look at the list of major companies using Joomla and Drupal sites and you'll see many household names.
Do You Agree With Me?
I'm not saying most of us will great money and not everyone I know in OS is doing well, but compared to colleagues in other industries, I see a lot more confidence and bullishness? Am I right?
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