Saturday Sessions 2009/Global Free Software

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[edit] "Global Free Software" (Robert Lemke)

Robert is from the TYPO3 project; he has the luxury of working full-time as a developer, funded by the TYPO3 organization. This is the most popular CMS in Germany, though relatively unknown in the United States. There are around half a million installations around the world, and it's doing fine financially; it gets funding mostly from students and small companies.

Developing is easier than marketing, because if you put 10 developers in a room, they can generally solve a problem; but marketing is a much more nebulous question.

There is no company behind TYPO3; it's completely community-driven. There has been some marketing effort, aided by branding companies who happen to use TYPO3 and who have held free workshops for TYPO3 branding. This led to some good results: there's now a "vision" - "inspiring people to share"; and a mission statement - "to jointly innovate excellent free software enabling people to communicate". There's also now a TYPO3 font, called "Share".

TYPO3 has hundreds of consulting agencies that can implement it in Europe; these help with marketing as well.

"Marketing" in this case can mean finding users/customers and getting funding; and, more generally, getting "buzz". There are many projects that get much more buzz than TYPO3, despite TYPO3's popularity; in the CMS world, Drupal, Joomla and WordPress are all examples, especially in the U.S.

"A topic I don't have an answer for": What are the best approaches to marketing - mass marketing? Going to developer conferences? Is it possible to do marketing creatively, without the resources of an actual company (e.g., paying travel costs)? Should there be central, worldwide marketing, or should it be done country by country?

[edit] Audience reactions

• getting usage by large companies has its own challenges, because they are usually afraid to use an open-source solution unless it's well-known and its licensing is trusted.
• success in marketing to users, and in marketing to developers, are usually connected: users often become developers, etc.
• it helps a lot to have a formal organization: it's an interface for companies to communicate with; it's a place to which companies and foundations can donate money; and it enables expanding into other countries (TYPO3 has such an organization).
  • Robert: somewhat-related issue: paying developers is risky, because it can alienate unpaid volunteers. TYPO3's solution is to only pay developers for those projects for which volunteers can't be found.
• someone from Blender: it helps to be a differentiated product; we have an easier job than a CMS organization, because we have no direct open-source competitors
• someone from Inkscape: a lot of our marketing is user-driven; we benefit from users being excited about the product.
• localized documentation wikis (one for each language) help a lot.
  • Robert: does this perhaps lead to a danger of weakening the brand, if all discussions are not happening in one central place (i.e., in English-language forums and wikis)?
  • someone from Open-Source Geospatial Foundation - if there's a community that can self-organize, either a single city, a country, or anything else, bring it forth and encourage them.
• Blender again: it's easier for projects that have more of a visual aspect, because you can show nice-looking example galleries.
• usage tends to be a regional issue; the popularity of one's different competitors can change dramatically from one country to the next
• showing up at big conferences, like SIGGRAPH, can make a big difference
• it's good to remind oneself that we are competing with for-profit corporations, even though we started our projects with less profit-minded intentions.
  • it's not good for "free" to be the main selling point for one's software; among other things, companies like Microsoft give away software for free. Support should be the big selling point for open source - users can speak directly with developers, which never happens with proprietary software.
    • Robert - for the TYPO3 organization to provide support directly has been tricky, since they don't want to compete with consulting agencies who implement TYPO3 support. The solution has been to create a certification program - individuals can get certification after a €150 program, and agencies can advertise themselves as "Certified Integrators" if they have at least 1 (or 2?) TYPO3-certified employees. This program took two years to put together, but it has been worthwhile.
• you usually only know about users when they complain about problems.
  • Twitter is a good way of communicating with users who are having problems - they get problems solved quickly, and they end up telling their friends, "if there's a problem, just tweet about it".
• Inkscape again - we're just now trying to get information on who our user base is. For example, scrapbookers use Inkscape a lot, and scrapbooking is a huge industry.
• what are the best ways to do press relations, i.e. to get written about in newspapers, magazines and blogs?
  • Blender: we have one official press person; for anyone else to talk to the press can be tricky, because it's unclear whether they're representing the project officially or unofficially
  • very regionally-based - it helps to have connections with the local press
  • Robert: for TYPO3, press communications, etc. are released by individuals, not representing TYPO3 as a whole, because we don't want the TYPO3 organization in the business of creating software per se.

Somewhat-related issue: paying developers is risky, because it can alienate unpaid volunteers. TYPO3's solution is to only pay developers for those projects for which volunteers can't be found.