The nuclear option
We started the preliminary financial planning for our nuclear option today. It was so preliminary, in fact, it took less than ten cells of a spreadsheet. Anyway, the nuclear option is to open source most of our software; essentially give it away. We'll make money on maintenance and support. Maybe.
We obtained a research paper from MIT that describes business models around open source software; so we'll see what we can learn and adjust our plans accordingly.
Our revenue per sale will go down by about 75%, however because the software is free, we hope to increase the volume to offset the lower price point. And we hope the exposure will bring us into new markets previously unavailable to us. The marketing strategy we can borrow from one of the many successful open source companies currently in existence. The key to this of course, is the products. Are they really useful outside of our current niche? Will companies in our niche drop our competitors for an open source solution? I guess we'll find out.
We obtained a research paper from MIT that describes business models around open source software; so we'll see what we can learn and adjust our plans accordingly.
Our revenue per sale will go down by about 75%, however because the software is free, we hope to increase the volume to offset the lower price point. And we hope the exposure will bring us into new markets previously unavailable to us. The marketing strategy we can borrow from one of the many successful open source companies currently in existence. The key to this of course, is the products. Are they really useful outside of our current niche? Will companies in our niche drop our competitors for an open source solution? I guess we'll find out.
posted by SJM at 11:34 AM
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