The document summarizes a study on marketing and communication strategies for open source software. It outlines the study, compares communication models between open source software producers, and describes interviews conducted with representatives from corporate distributions, open communities, and sponsored open source software providers. The interviews covered questions about product development processes, licensing strategies, and use of communication channels.

1. Uno studio sulle strategie di marketing e
comunicazione per il software libero
1
U N I V E R S I T À D E G L I S T U D I D E L L’ I N S U B R I A
D AV I D E T A I B I
OPEN SOURCE SUMMER SCHOOL 2012

2. Outline
2
— Case study on marketing and communication aspect
— Comparison between communication models adopted by
OSS producers
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3. CONFSL 2012
- Software unbundled from hardware
- Software packages
- Trial Shareware
- GNU project
- Linux
3
Davide Taibi
- Software repositories
Traditional Marketing
- OpenOffice
CSS Distribution and Marketing
- LibreOffice
Social Media Marketing
22/06/12

4. Open Source Producers
4
— Corporate
Distributions
¡ Industries
¡ SMEs
— Open
Communities
— Sponsored
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5. Product Development, Marketing and Communication
5
Concept
Idea generation Idea screening developement and Marketing Strategy Business analysis Commercialization
testing
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6. Product Development
6
Idea generation Idea screening
• R&D department • Demand
• Production Department • Profitability
• Sales Team • Payback period?
• Employees
• Customers
• Competitors
• External Sources
• Market Research
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

7. The Case Study
7
— Semi-structured interview
— Different roles interviewed
¡ CEOs
¡ Marketing director
¡ Sales Manager
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

8. The interview
8
— Q1. Company information (#employees, revenue…)
— Q2. How do you come up with ideas for new product/
features?
— Q3. On what ground do you decide if develop product or
not?
— Q4. How do you decide if a new product should be released
with an OSS license?
— Q5. Which strategy do you take into account during the
lifecycle of a new product or service?
— Q6. Which communication channels do you adopt?
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

9. The interviewees
9
Company Employees FLOSS role
Engineering 6500
(CSS division)
Engineering 50 Producer
(OSS division) Integrator
Studio QWERTY 12 Integrator
Ubuntu (community) 400 Canonical Producer
542 Community
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

10. Engineering (CSS division)
10
How do you come up with ideas for new product/
features?
— ENG is a customer integrator.
— Works only on job order
On what ground do you decide if develop product or
not?
— ENG do not applies marketing research
— Only relies on customer’s feedbacks
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

11. Engineering (CSS division)
11
How do you decide if a new product should be
released with an OSS license?
— ENG suggest its Business Units to adopt OSS in project
already approved by the customers.
— BU are free to decide if adopt OSS or not.
Which strategy do you take into account during the
lifecycle of a new product or service?
— Development phase: silence.
— Once the product is ready: survey among customers to
evaluate the appreciation
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

12. Engineering (CSS division)
12
Which communication channels do you adopt?
— Company website
¡ SEO
— Magazines only for Public Administration
— Conference and Fairs
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13. Engineering (OSS division)
13
How do you come up with ideas for new product/
features?
— IT marketing monitoring
— Team Ideas
— Job order
On what ground do you decide if develop product or
not?
— Only relies on customer’s feedbacks
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

14. Engineering (CSS division)
14
How do you decide if a new product should be
released with an OSS license?
— OSS BU releases only 100% free/open source projects
Which strategy do you take into account during the
lifecycle of a new product or service?
— Development phase: pre announcements.
— Once the product is ready: survey among customers to
evaluate the appreciation
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

15. Engineering (CSS division)
15
Which communication channels do you adopt?
— Company website
¡ SEO
— Every product has its own website
— Social Network
¡ LinkedIn
¡ Twitter
¡ Facebook no longer used
— Magazines only for Public Administration
— Conference and Fairs
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

16. Studio QWERTY
16
How do you come up with ideas for new product/
features?
— Team Ideas
On what ground do you decide if develop product or
not?
— Ideas are submitted to marketing agency to analyze market
share.
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

17. Studio QWERTY
17
How do you decide if a new product should be
released with an OSS license?
— We always adopt FLOSS license (when applicable)
Which strategy do you take into account during the
lifecycle of a new product or service?
— Development phase: slience
— Once the product is ready: public event
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

18. Studio QWERTY
18
Which communication channels do you adopt?
— We mostly delegate communication to comm. Agency
¡ Newsletters
¡ Conferences
— We avoid web banners
— Social Network
¡ LinkedIn
¡ No incomes from social network anymore
— Website
¡ SEO
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

19. Ubuntu Community
19
How do you come up with ideas for new product/
features?
— The enphasis is on introducing features to improve market share
— Some features are developed by the users (eg. MyUnity)
— New features defined independently from team responsible for
each component
— New features have to be approved by technical board
On what ground do you decide if develop product or not?
— Ideas and features added to the roadmap based on Ubuntu
project vision
— Within ubuntu ideas are assessed by Mark Shuttleworth
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

20. Ubuntu Community
20
How do you decide if a new product should be
released with an OSS license?
— Ubuntu is released as 100%OSS.
— Canonical applies different licenses for some server side
components.
Which strategy do you take into account during the
lifecycle of a new product or service?
— No specific strategies during lifecycle
— Events to present new features.
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

21. Ubuntu Community
21
Which communication channels do you adopt?
— Website
— Social Media
¡ Twitter
¡ Facebook
¡ LinkedIn
— Online Magazines
— Press release
— Events
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22. Communication Channel Comparison
22
New Features ENG_CSS ENG_OSS QWERTY Ubuntu
On request (job order) " " " "
"
Based on user's needs " " "
" "
Based on team's ideas " " "
"
Team decision "
Tested components
developed by community
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12

23. Conclusions
23
— Case studies on FLOSS marketing and communication
models
— Differences from SME, Industries and Open Communities
emerged
— New interviews just carried out
¡ 4 communities
¡ 10 SME
¡ 3 Industries
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24. Q&A
24
davide.taibi@uninsubria.it
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
CONFSL 2012 Davide Taibi 22/06/12