In other posts on this blog free open source software(FOSS) and software-as-a-service(Saas) are being talked about in positive terms as paradigms on the rise. I want to take a step to the more general to talk about the same technological landscape, but in more economic and social terms.
In sales, we can think of two very opposite types of selling. One is a disabler, where a "pain" is created, and the salesman then gets the mission to solve the pain. Synonyms for "pain" are "lacking", "problem", "social ill", "vexation", "need" and many more. The second sales type is the enabler. Interestingly, the enabler sales strategy delivers solutions to a "problem space" also. The distinction between sales types is the way the selling playing board is set up. The disabler subtracts from the buyers options first, then offers the solution in an environment of impoverishment. The enabler simply adds value to the buyer's already rich environment.
The rise of FOSS, Saas, and Cloud Computing are within an enabler paradigm. Business models that ride this wave, or push the wave higher, need to be that type of sales person. Obviously, this type is easily stereotyped as teacher or even altruist. Fine, let's accept that the type is, in street jargon, less mafioso than the disabler.
In the last few years I finally started seeing Bill Gates point. People need income. All free stuff within some domain means no one was making money. Bill Gates and Richard Stallman are the gods of the opposite salestypes, and Gates is saying with a world of Stallman's giving away software there is less of an industry, which translates into less people with money in their pockets buying houses and DVD players. Way to go Bill, I totally see your point.
But along comes Google, and suddenly it is no longer saintly and simple Stallman versus dispensing-large-paychecks-Gates. Strangely, Google enables with free services, and the only price the user has to pay is smart-advertising. This is not the old altruism anymore, and it is not the disabler either.
But a trajectory is set up in the FOSS computer with all its most groovy functionality relying on Google services, towards almost no money in the business.
The enablers will need to be more truly enabling. If the need is water, with sub $300 laptops and the FOSS infinity suite of powerful software, buyers live in the middle of a large lake. If you're going to sell in that environment, it better be a darn nice bucket for scooping water. Or a job in security, which is just working at the desalination plant.
1 comment:
Here's an analogy fer ya:
Microsoft is a coal mine being kept open by a state committed to Keynesian protection of miner's jobs in the interest of full employment and a stable economy.
Richard Stallman is Milton Friedman arguing that this system is unsustainable and unjust compared to letting the market decide the company's fate.
Google is a source of ultra-cheap foreign coal which does not directly benefit the miners or the state. By propping up Microsoft, the state guarantees cheap coal for local industries, but ultimately a cost is paid in taxation and state control.
Is Richard Stallman/Milton Friedman an insane zealot or diabolical trickster? Very possibly. But is there some substance to his argument?
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