We at AirGradient market both, a commercial (closed-source) air quality monitor as well as a commercial open software / open hardware one (monetized through selling kits [1]).
Unlike the article might indirectly imply, I see little difference in the key characteristics that determine effective marketing.
Both product types need a clear and consistent messaging, both need to build an audience, both need to bring value to the customer, both need to be transparent about the pricing, both need to be clear how they handle data, both need to provide great support etc.
Where I see a potential difference is in the customer type. Some of our customers prefer the open source version because it easy to make changes on the hardware as well as the software. However this also often means a little bit more work to get it up and running. Whereas other customers actually prefer the closed source product as it is bascially plug and play.
What I personally do like with having both products and dealing with both types of customers, is that it gives the chance to "market" the open source version to customers that often have not considered this route in the past but actually provides them with the better fit and better value.
The guide talks a lot about "be clear with your monetization strategy", which is great, because it is important not to bait & switch people, as well as to be clear to the Freetards exactly how much of a free lunch they can expect.
However, IMHO of equal - if not GREATER - importance and entirely missed from the blog post is "be clear about what you are doing with people's data".
You might well have just written the next unicorn dog's bollocks of software, but I (and I suspect many others) couldn't give a rats arse about your "journey" or any other marketing fluff if the practical reality is that you are secretly collecting telemetry all over the place, storing my data to train your AI algorithms and generally engaging in all sorts of other privacy infringing practices.
Yes, great point, but sadly I think we are still are in the minority.
It is amazing for instance how many note taking apps are cloud based, with so little justification, for something that screams local first so loudly.
You might think that Obsidian / Logseq etc are popular (and they are), but they pale in comparison with Roam, One Note, Evernote, etc. Syncing notes across devices in 2023 should NOT require a permanent copy in a cloud server, but here we are.
Is there ever a point where we can just accept the reality that "open source marketing" is really kind of an oxymoron?
If you want to give your work away for whatever reason, I salute you.
I know it's hard to believe but trying to monetize what is available for free just doesn't meet with a whole lot of success in most cases. And it is really misleading to keep suggesting otherwise.
Even if the open source contributor does not intend to monetize (not that there is anything wrong with that), even in it's core idea, it is still essential for open source contributors to know marketing.
1. As someone below said, even if you give away for free, people need to know what it is and where to find it. If you do not market, then you are just singing a beautiful song into the Void.
2. For an open source contribution to live and be useful, it needs to be maintained and evolve with the time and needs. That needs a healthy community around the project.
3. Open Source contributors are also living lives and there will come a time when they need to step back. This should not have a debilitating effect on the continuity of the project.
4. Also having a healthy community that supports in dev, responding to issues, documentation etc will have a positive impact on the contributor's mental health in the long term.
I'm confused by this comment. What does marketing have to do with open source at all? I don't care if anyone ever uses my software. It succeeds by virtue of being open source.
Open source software does not require a community to form around it. Software can be "done" and in low to no maintenance mode. It doesn't need to evolve with the time. It just is.
I welcome the discourse around healthy community building but I really dislike this trend of conflating community with open source as if somehow it's a property of free and open source software. It ain't.
For individuals, that's true: free always wins. It's different for corporations, they'll often pay for more commercial licensing or support. Unlike individuals, they're also often happy to pay because they'll spend money either way: buying vs paying someone to build/figure out.
And I don't see that as an oxymoron. If you believe that something is worthy of sinking your time into it, and you believe that it should be open source, and you're not filthy rich and can afford to do it as a charity, you'll need to get paid somehow. And for that, you need marketing.
And more generally, I'd love it if more open source developers adopted a business-approach to onboarding. "Here's what our product does, here are some use-cases it solves, here's how to get started quickly, and there is the documentation with plenty of working real-world examples" is just so much better than "here's some code that might or might not be what you're looking for, works for me, whatever".
100% right for corporations. When speaking with some security professionals, one aspect they look for in open-source projects is whether it has a monetization plan behind it. This is to give some assurance that there is longevity to the project and that it won't be forgotten about in the future.
If you want to give your work away for free, people still need to hear about it some way, which would be the marketing side of it.
I think it's only misleading when someone markets their open source project without being up front about their monetization strategy (whether they have one or don't)
Unlike the article might indirectly imply, I see little difference in the key characteristics that determine effective marketing.
Both product types need a clear and consistent messaging, both need to build an audience, both need to bring value to the customer, both need to be transparent about the pricing, both need to be clear how they handle data, both need to provide great support etc.
Where I see a potential difference is in the customer type. Some of our customers prefer the open source version because it easy to make changes on the hardware as well as the software. However this also often means a little bit more work to get it up and running. Whereas other customers actually prefer the closed source product as it is bascially plug and play.
What I personally do like with having both products and dealing with both types of customers, is that it gives the chance to "market" the open source version to customers that often have not considered this route in the past but actually provides them with the better fit and better value.
[1] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/kits/