The following post doesn’t really fit in line with the normal spirit of the blog, simply because it’s not funny nor directly related to technology. It’s called Business 2.0, as it relates to the ever problematic question any business owner has: “When should I grow and how?”.

As you may know, I’ve been a freelance Asterisk Platform developer since early 2003, turned to freelance development (Penguin for hire) around April 2007. Since that time, I’ve built systems and platforms for some of the better known brands around the world. Be it working directly with the customer or through a 3rd party (as a sub contractor) – I can easily say that I’ve completed over 120 different large scale projects within 3 years time. Now, when I refer to projects, I’m not referring to installing PBX systems, I don’t do that at all – I’m referring to highly complex application level development, creating some of the most innovative Asterisk based systems I’ve ever seen.

Image via CrunchBase

Image via Wikipedia

Putting aside everything, finalizing a rough estimate of 40 development projects on a yearly base, most of these performed solely by myself is a fairly challenging task. Sure, at times I’ll outsource some work to other freelancers like myself, specifically in fields where I’m not all that fluent (Database, Web Development, UI) – but yet, doing that means that I’m conducting 3 – 5 projects on a monthly basis.

After doing so for 3 years now, I can’t help but start thinking about expanding my business, taking it to the next level by hiring more people and building it up to a new level. Question remains for this: “How? What is the natural track of expanding your business?” – of course the simple answer would be: “Just hire another developer or two, and start doing more sales” – it’s not as simple as it sounds. After thinking about it for some time, I’ve concluded there are a few models of expansion:

Model 1: Organic Growth

Organic growth can be described as the simplest way of growth: “Hire a new guy and get more work in”. The problem with this model that it is fully reliant on your ability to sell more. However, as you concentrate on sales more, you take time from the development and delivery process – thus, the addition of the new developer is not a 100% addition, it’s actually 100% (developer) minus 40% (you) – so you are not at 200% capacity, you are 160% capacity. Surely 160 is 100, however, for the initial 6 months, till the guy learns the ropes, you are not at 160, you are actually at 80 – can you and your business sustain that?

Thus, the main issue with Organic growth is cash flow, can your business sustain the elevated expenses with less income for the period of transition? If the answer is NO, then you need a different method. If the answer is YES, then you are in the best place in the world, however, bear in mind that taking someone to work for you is a responsibility – people are not resources, they are human beings, with families and children – taking someone to work for you is like taking responsibility for their lives.

Model 2: The Partner

A partnership with a person who is equally matched to you is always a good option. Technically speaking, it means that you are teaming with someone who generates as much work as you do and is capable of finalizing the work as fast and as good as you can. Yet, taking a partner doesn’t negate the requirement for a new employee or two. In this case, you may end up with too much sales with too little staff to deliver – that is a big problem.

Another issue with partners is the issue of trust. While most partners tend to rely on each other and trust each other, that trust can easily be broken (in most cases by stupid things). It’s enough for one partner to now carry its weight in sales/development to initiate a chain reaction, shortly ending in the partnership dissolving.

So, the partner is a good option, however, may prove to be problematic if the wrong partner is chosen – in addition, dissolving a partnership solely on these issues isn’t all that simple – and usually ends up in litigation and other judicial issues – YUCK!

Model 3: Un-intrusive Angel

Some people ragard Un-intrusive Angels as “Stupid Money” – an Angel investor that doesn’t interfere in your company business model and operations. In many cases, this is how start-up companies start – someone gives them a lump sum of money to start their business, signing off to own a portion of the new company.

An un-intrusive investor usually gives you the money and pays you a visit once every few months to see how his money is spent. Don’t expect to raise a whole lot from these people, usually you will get anything from 25K$ to around 250K$ – tops. If you are getting an investment from an Angel, make sure you plan your business carefully – and make sure your investor knows what he is getting into. The Angel is not a found piggy bank, he is a business man looking for profit – if you make sure his expectations of profits (time frame, amount, percentage, etc) are kept within the reason of your business – he will make an educated decision and invest accordingly. Promises like: “you’ll double your money in 3 years” are stupid – make sure it’s realistic and to the point. If you promise the moon, and reach a star – that’s a problem, if you promise the skies and hit a start – that’s wonderful.

Model 4: The Strategic-Intrusive Angel

Image by TheFemGeek via Flickr

A strategic angel is similar to the previous one in terms of funds, however, he is more capable in assisting your business meet its goals. Usually, it would be someone who is already a well established figure in your business sector, had made his money from previous companies and is now looking for new ideas and businesses. I call him an intrusive Angel, as sometimes he may have ideas as to where your business should go – and he will make sure you hear his ideas. You may regard it as annoying, but you should still listen to your Angel and pay him the respect he deserves.

Sometimes this Angel may invest in your business due to the fact that he has a hidden agenda. An agenda can be: The angel looks at your business and see a certain potential you are not planning, he’ll invest and try to re-direct your company to the agenda he sees. This is usually the case when your angel is invested into several endeavours that is either parallel to each other or may have orthogonal intersection points. These angels can be the builders of your business or the destroyers, it is up to you to make sure the latter doesn’t happen.

Prolog:

So, which model did I choose? – I didn’t choose yet, I’m still figuring it out myself. What ever the model may be, the choice isn’t simple nor straight forward. At best, whatever choice I’ll take will have a profound impact on my business and me – so I’ll need to weigh my options carefully. If you can think of an additional model, I’d love to hear about it – so just comment on this post.

Revenue sharing is one of the oldest methods of earning profits, actually, I believe it may just be right up there with trading of goods and food. For those of you not in the know, I’ll explain what revenue sharing is:

1. A content provider wishes to distribute a certain type of content – charging for it.
2. The content provider has not ability to charge the consumers directly, thus he partners with another party – the transport maintainer.
3. The transport maintainer charges the consumer, while keeping a certain percentage in his pocket.
4. Everybody’s is happy.

In general, this model works really well in many markets – specifically those that are driven by unique content – for example the mobile content market (ringtones, screen savers, games, apps) – the Apple App store is a wonderful example of how this works.

In the telecom industry, the revenue shares business is very common – however, in many cases it is highly guarded as a secret – main reason is that now one wants anybody else to know how they do it. This hiding of information, usually results in some problems – as when there is hiding of information, only those in the know are able to access it. Those in the know are called “mediators” or in Herbew “Machers”. In this entire ordeal, the mediator also takes a small percentage – leaving the content provider with slightly less. So, now it looks like this:

1. A content provider wishes to distribute a certain type of content – charging for it.
2. The content provider has not ability to charge the consumers directly, thus he contacts a mediator to find him a transport partner.
3. The mediator engages the prospective transport maintainer.
4. The transport maintainer charges the consumer, while keeping a certain percentage in his pocket and passing some funds to the mediator as well.
5. Everybody’s is happy.

So, if everybody’s so happy – why am I bitching about it? very simple – people are Greedy and always want more – putting the entire model into a frenzy. In order to give an example, let’s imagine the following scenario:

1. Company A provides IVR based content utilizing Asterisk server, connected to the internet.
2. The mediator engages a premium number company, getting the total revenue of 0.08$ for every inbound minute of traffic.
3. The premium number company leaves 0.01$ in its pocket and also pays the mediator a fee of 0.01$ per minute.
4. The content provider gets 0.06$ of the 0.08$ – 75% of the net profit goes to the content provider.
5. Content provider says: “Hell, I want the mediators 0.01$ as well, and I think the premium company should only get 0.005$, so I would get 0.075$ at the end”
6. Content provider contacts the premium provider and starts complaining
7. Premium provider negotiates and strikes a deal for 0.07 to the content provider, leaving the premium provider with 0.005$ and the mediator with 0.005$
8. Premium provider says: “I’m not making enough money on this, actually, I’m loosing money – I’ll find a better alternative service for that access number”
9. Premium provider asks mediator to bring in a new customer, providing similar content – mediator has sure incentive here
10. Premium provider gets new customer and transfers the access number to the new customer – returning back to previous profits
11. Original content provider is left with no profits and only greed in his hands

Over the past 10 years, I’ve seen this vicious cycle happen over and over and over again, in various formats and scenarios – but always ending in the same outcome – the content provider always suffers. If you’re a content provider and you provide IVR based services, let the people that provide you the access make their cut and the people in the middle, without them, you will have a service with no access – which means no service at all. Don’t go about thinking you can keep all the profits to yourself, you will break the equilibrium of this business, and eventually, no one will want to do business with you.

Image via Wikipedia

When I started using Open Source software, it seemed like all Open Source projects are driven by philanthropic agendas. We were all focused on “sticking it to the man” – showing all these would be software vendors that community driven projects can do just as well – if not better.

"When I was a child I spoke as a child I
understood as a child I thought as a child;
but when I became a man I put away childish
things." - I Cor. xiii. 11.

Well, I’m not claiming that Open Source is childish – absolutely not, however, when you are a student you tend to look at things in one way, when you have a family to care for – you start looking at things differently. You remember these days in life when your dad said: “When you’ll have children you will understand” – well, now I do.

So, what am I rambling about exactly? I’ll tell you. The day before Passover I attended several meetings, which when I came back home had pissed me off immensely. I feel an urge to write all about these meetings, including who I met exactly, however – I won’t do that. However, I will give a rough idea of these.

Meeting 1 : A world recognized Mobile application player

I came into the meeting with this company, where the CTO of the company explained to me that they are looking to create an Asterisk based solution for their application’s users. My initial question was: how many users? what is your concurrency level? – The answer that I got was: “Oh, we don’t need something major, just a few lines of configurations in Asterisk config files in order to make this work”.

I left the meeting slightly pissed off, thinking to myself: “You bloody inconsiderate prick! You bring me to a meeting, spend my time – and then telling me that this is just a few lines of configuration. If it is that simple, why don’t you do it yourself? you have 20 developers in there, 4 IT people and god knows how many outsourced workers off-shore – if it was that simple, you would have done it already – so probably it isn’t – right?”

Meeting 2 : A well established IVR services vendor

The second meeting was with a well established IVR content vendor, this company runs around 16M minutes of inbound IVR traffic every month. They invited me in order to talk about expanding into new countries, wishing to get premium based access numbers in various countries. So, we started talking, and the guy indicates that he wants a certain kick-back payout, which I know is impossible – at least without charging the user more. Actually, the guy indicated that out of the interconnect fee, he wants to get almost 90% as a kick back.

Meeting 3 : A start up rendering IVR content

The third meeting was the most amazing one – these guys wanted to build an Asterisk system to server around 4000 concurrent channels – outsource the entire development to my company – and pay as a revenue share. When I asked for their business model, marketing plan, investors, profiles – I got a response of – we don’t yet have all of these, we only have an idea at this point that we want to implement.

Garage based companies are built by people who can do the work themselves, not the other way around.

At this point, you are probably asking yourself: “What does this have to do with the title?” – Well, all of these meetings had one thing in common. The people I met were under the impression that Open Source is some form of philanthropy. Or to be more exact, people who deal with the Open Source market are philanthropists. My question is this: “Why are we perceived as philanthropists? don’t we have families to care for? don’t we need to pay mortgages and bills just like everybody else?”. I guess when people read about the various Open Source entrepreneurs, such as Mark Shuttleworth – the immediately associate Open Source with Big Exists – this is not the case.

At some level, this is purely our fault – we educated people that Open Source is a highly economical methodology of solving technical challenges. No where along the way, had we educated the public that behind the model there are people, people who need to make a living.

If you are an Open Source consultant, developer, evangelist or just someone who may have an opinion on this, I’d love to read what you say.

Today I got the chance to speak at a Polycom half-day convention, mainly to speak about Asterisk and HDvoice. Now, putting aside the part about HDvoice (I’m getting a post about that on its own), I gotten to the point where I believe that I’m currently perceived as being an eccentric.

So, why am I eccentric? very simple, I’ve reached a point where I can say things that may be perceived as rude – and write it off an being an eccentric quirk.

I’ve talked about Asterisk ability to support Video, while the current Polycom VVX1500 video phone isn’t yet supported at its fullest. One of the people in the crowd mentioned some sleezy,al-cheapo, SIP Video phone (to be more exact, he’s the local distributor) – and I claimed that I don’t count that phone as a comparison to Polycom or other VoIP Video phones, simply because in my view it’s not a worth while comparison. Comm’on, let’s be realistic, can you compare a Polycom VVX1500 (an HDvoice Video phone) with some shitty sub-VGA SIP Video phone from China? the mere comparison is simply insulting for Polycom.

Shortly after negating that phone, the person stood up and left the room. At the break, a friend said to me that I shouldn’t have said that, in order to come out the bigger man. Common, the guy is surely making a joke of himself. I commented: “I’ve said what I said, I stand by my opinion – besides, you know I’m eccentric – eccentric people say eccentric things” – he agreed that I’m eccentric, after all, you can’t be an Open Source evangelist without being an eccentric – now can you?

Ok, it’s day 1 (or actually day 2) for AstriCon 2009 – and here’s my report for the day.

Yesterday was kind’a of a hectic day for me, as I was teaching a full day track of Asterisk and Cloud Computing, specifically, implementing Asterisk systems with Amazon EC2. I started the day with a class filled with 20+ people, and ended the day with a similar number – so in general I’m very happy. Not many people tend to attend the pre-conference days, so having that number of people and their positive reactions through out the day were very reassuring to me.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from this experience, it is the following: If you give a full day track, don’t arrive at the hotel 24 hours prior to it – you need at least 48 hours! People didn’t really notice (I hope), but through out the day I was suffering from a splitting headache – one that would usually send me right into bed with a couple of Advil’s. But hey, that didn’t stop me and I powered through it, I’m fairly proud of myself for doing so – as at the end of the day I regained back my strength and was livelier.

Today was the first official day of the conference – I gave the opening talk for the Cloud Computing track of the day. My talk was about how to build “IP Centrex” like services, without building an “IP Centrex”. I guess that I didn’t really introduce a brand new concept, but actually talked about something that many are thinking about, but are not inclined to try it on their own and burn some cash on. I guess my talk helped them out saying: “Hey, we’re not talking out of our asses here, this guy makes some sense and what we thought of isn’t that far fetched”.

Previous to that, Digium announced the 2009 Digium innovation award winners, where my company won an award in the pioneer category. This is the second year in a row my company had won the award, and I’m really happy with being acknowledged for this specific work. Having being a part of the community for over 7 years now, this award, at least to me personally, says a lot – it’s basically saying: “Look, you’ve done good, you’ve done some work that really helps out the project and the community in general – here’s a beer and a toast to you – hip hip” – well, that’s kind’a of a mouth full, but you get what I mean. I think that this is actually the place to mention that the award was for developing a high-powered Dialer/IVR platform, used in the Israeli elections and the work was contracted for a company called Shtrudel.

The all conference party is tonight – so I better rest up and be ready for it – should be fun. I guess beer and food are always a good mix when a bunch geeks are getting together

Last night I met with a friend of mine, Mr. Doron Ofek. For those of you not familiar with the Open Source market in Israel, Doron is the one person most affiliated with RedHat in Israel, as Doron championed the adaptation of RedHat Linux servers in various enterprises and government offices in Israel. Doron is currently heavily involved in the OpenMoko project and its adaptation and promotion in Israel.

We spent a great deal of time last night, talking about the various aspects of Open Source training in Israel – as both us provide various training services to this market sector. While I’m mostly focused on Asterisk Training, Doron is focused on Linux and XEN training. Both of us have some our training routes knee deep in Israel’s computer/IT training companies, namely Matrix, Hi-Tech College and John Bryce. We both talked about our discontent with their inability to promote and market Open Source training courses, simply because they have no idea what these are.

For example, while Hi-Tech college were incapable of signing up a single person for an Asterisk Bootcamp course, I had signed up 10 people to a my first bootcamp – without any marketing or sales budget, simply by putting out the word in the right places. Now, Hi-Tech college has a list of over 5000 people who studied Linux and other Open Source and networking subjects in their college – should have they been able to gather up at least 10 people as well (less then 0.5% of their entire customer base)? the answer is a definite yes, why were they unable to do so? simply because they have no idea what Asterisk is, how it can be marketed, how it can sold and how the customer should be approached.

Doron had indicated a similar issue with both John Bryce and Matrix – however, due to other reasons. However, Doron had managed to sell quite a few training courses for Linux on his own – without any help from the big boys – how did that happen? how is it possible that Doron and I succeeded where the other colleges had failed? how can that be? – then we both realized why eventually, proprietary software will die and the Open Source movement, over the course of time, will simply negate the presence of proprietary software – simply because Open Source people provide for better marketing strategies and methodologies.

Did we learn how to do marketing on school? are we marketing people by nature? the answer is NO – we learned how to market our belief in the Open Source initiative over the course of time. We championed Open Source in various enterprises, events, public speakings and other places. We were the “soap box” speaker at Hide Park’s Speakers Corner, we were that crazy man on the street screaming: “The world is coming to an end, repent!” (well, you know what I mean) – but all in all, as time progressed we learned how to market the Open Source initiative and our belief – the large enterprises are stuck in their own belief and stagnant marketing strategies and plans. As time progressed, the various “champions” left the large enterprises, simply because they got fed up with the wrongful methodology of these and followed their own path – and doing so with moderate success.

In my belief, as time will progress, the large enterprises will surely migrate to the Open Source, and I won’t be surprised if within a period of 5-6 years Microsoft will be shipping out a version of Windows that is based on the Linux Kernel – or another Open Source distibution methodology. Call me crazy, call me chaotic, call me a dreamer – but mark my words – this will happen.

Michael Eisenberg is a well known VC partner (Benchmark Capital) and an avid blogger. In one of his recent posts, Michael refers to 8 different approaches to raising a start-up company, in the midst of an economic crisis. The full blog entry can be found at his blog, however, after reading it myself, I would like to comment on it. The below section will also be commented to Michael’s blog for reference:

“Everyone in the company is a salesman – Your R&D team should be selling too”

This is an interesting approach, however, R&D people are R&D people because usually they don’t do sales well. Actually, most of the R&D people I know are the worst sales people I’ve ever met. To be honest, in my previous position, our R&D Manager basically screwed a 500,000$ deal that we worked on for 6 months, because I said something in the form of: “It’s possible to do, however, I can’t really say what would be required to do so.” – R&D people can easily sell products that are closed, not products that are under development. As start-ups are constantly in the development phase – this is a BAD idea.

“Hire sales people on commission only”

YES! This is a great idea, although, it means that you’ll need a hell of a lot more sales people to manage. When a sales person works on commissions only, it means that while he’s selling your stuff, he’s selling other stuff too. It requires a certain degree of finesse and agility to be able to manage such a team, but the general idea is good, actually it’s GREAT!

“Virtual company”

Michael’s idea of a virtual company isn’t new, dozens of companies around the world utilize this methodology. However, this methodology sometimes requires quite some resources. For example, according to Michael, the utilization of sites like oDesk and rent-a-coder may assist in your quest to lower general spending. That is true, however, it automatically poses a problem. Let us imagine that I develop a service that is made of 3 distinct areas of expertise. I hire all coders from oDesk, now, I need to remotely co-ordinate them all, so that the code I’ll get is manageable and well documented. If not, the end result will a running service that becomes stagnant, as no one can go into the code and continue its development (seen it happen to 2 of my customers, both start-ups).

“Choose Self-PR over paid search”

Hmmm… I can’t really comment on that, as I practice it – and can honestly say, it’s very hard.

“Focus on product”

Killer applications in the web are a must, if it’s not a killer – your service is dead in the water. Killer services like PokeTalk have a great potential to become the next big thing, but they highly rely on the company’s ability to market the product correctly within the available channels.

“New distribution channels”

Michael talks about the creation of affiliate programs – that’s not as simple as it sounds. Many companies made a shitload of money out of building distribution channels and affiliate program management systems – affiliates are a wonderful idea as long as you are capable of managing these in a proper manner (See my comment about commission only sales people).

All in all, Michael surely has some valid points, however, these require delicate work and proper management in order to work right – if executed improperly, will not only end in failure, may also send you down debt country.

Lately I’ve come to the realization, that we are to blame for our own inability to promote Open Source and the adaptation of Open Source proficiency. Being an Open Source evangelist and consultant, this is very weird to be said by one like myself, however, this is my realization – and I will explain.

In the early days of Open Source adaptations (late 90′s, early 2000), Open Source software was a somewhat magical solution that meant: pay nothing, get more. Software packages like Linux, Apache, mySQL, PostgreSQL and programming languages like PERL and PHP had lowered the bar on the adaptation of new technologies, and enabled a prolific number of solutions and services.

I still remember the early days, when a Windows based Mail Relay would cost anything between 800$ to 1200$, and I would come in with a Linux based solution that would do the same thing for FREE – amazing. As time progressed, so did the technology and the penetration of Open Source into new fields. CRM, ERP, Telecoms, management – all of these now enjoy a diverse number of Open Source solutions. However, the original concept of ‘Open Source = Magical FREE Solution’ had still remained in the minds of managers and business people.

Today we are confronted with ‘would-be’ Open Source solution experts, which adopt and develop upon Open Source products and project various applications. In example, let’s take a look at Asterisk. Asterisk has a multitude of Open Source solutions, ranging from PBX system, Prepaid calling cards, Wholesale routing platforms, Attendance system, Presence systems – and even a plant watering solution. The problem with this ever growing number of solutions is that Asterisk is immediately considered to be: “A magical solution” capable of solving any problem – when it’s not even remotely related to Asterisk. For example, a friend of mine had been asked to develop an Asterisk based solution, that would support a total of 250 concurrent call initiations and up-to 3000 concurrent calls on the system. Any Asterisk developer would take a look at this, and would immediately say: “Hmmm…. this requires several servers, but hey, what about the application itself? that would also have an impact”. Now, the customer of the project has a ‘would-be’ Asterisk tech in his company which said: “I was able to initiate 200 concurrent SIP invites to Asterisk via SIPP, no problem’ – HELLO! STUPID! where’s the application? where’s the database? where’s the user information flow? comm’on, are you listening to yourself speak? or simply are filled with the gasses coming out of your ass that are affecting your brain?

Now, once the customer learns that Asterisk is most probably not the right solution for the problem, he becomes angry. Why? because he now learns that he needs to spend about 10 times more money than he anticipated for the creation of this tool – well, that’s life when you have no idea what you are doing/saying, and you believe in magical solutions. However, we – “The Open Source Community – is the one to blame for this scenario, because we got the world accustomed to the idea that Open Source is like magic – flip the Linux magic wand, and the rest will solve itself.

I’d like to open the floor for discussion on this, as I believe most of you will have something to say about this.

While Open Source projects around the world gather up the troops and become recognized for what they are: highly polished, highly effective, extremely economical products – the situation in Israel is fairly different. We’ve all heard about companies like Zimbra (recently acquired by Yahoo), MySQL (recently acquired by SUN) and others, which had struck BIG TIME. However, the situation in Israel differs immensely.

I’ve been invited to participate in a panel at the Garage Geeks, to discuss the various aspects of Open Source sustainability. I’ve made it my business to build a business completely surrounded by Open Source, devoted to the promotion and adaptation of Open Source – and when possible, the promotion of Open Source licensing models and the understanding of what they mean.

In one of my previous posts, I’ve indicated that Open Source projects are highly exploited in an illegal manner in Israel, thus, making Open Source business in Israel a high target for Open Crooks. The question immediately arises, how can an Open Source project become successful? In addition to that, what are the factors that make a good Open Source project a grand Open Source project.

Step 1: Features

For an Open Source project to become popular and frequently used, it should have an extensive range of features, which is constantly being upgraded and enhanced. Taking from my own personal favorite, let’s take a look at Asterisk – the Open Source PBX. Over the course of the past 5 years, Asterisk had evolved to include hundreds of features. Each new feature in an Open Source product expose it to a new market. With Asterisk, the introduction of an Answering machine detection tool had introduced it to the automatic dialer and contact center market. The introduction of LumenVox speech recognition had introduced it to the ASR market, and so on.

While features are important, it is also very important to make sure the features included are features that the community and users require. While it is really cool to have a mod_kitchensink for the Apache web server, no one really uses it.

Step 2: Community

In order for an Open Source product to become successful, it MUST have a vibrant and active community – better yet, more than one. While an active developer community is important for the advancement of the project, a set of auxiliary communities is required. A users community is a must, rendering support and usage ideas to its members. No less important is a business oriented community, one that speaks to the manager level people, those making the decisions in organizations. Tap into that level, and the Open Source project is now gaining followers from other side of the border.

Managers tend to be highly traditional in thinking, not inclined to utilize Open Source at first try. A vibrant business community of the Open Source project can do wonders to the project, especially with its promotion and adaptation into existing and new business structures.

Step 3: Funding and Sustainability

Funding an Open Source project doesn’t entirely mean – MONEY! Well, eventually it does mean money, but not in the normal way we think or work with money. Open Source developers don’t work primarily for the money, the driving force behind Open Source developers is different. Question be: “If Open Source developers aren’t motivated by money, why would you need funding?” – the reason is simple, the surroundings of an Open Source project require funding.

The surroundings of an Open Source project mainly include the following: public events, developer meetings, servers, hosting, travel fares, participating in trade shows and others. All of the above are generally associated with Marketing, however, marketing an Open Source project is sometimes as important as the project itself. If we are to examine the growth of the Linux community and user base in the world, we are mainly thankful to RedHat in its early days (1996-2001), closely followed by Debian with its recent off spring Ubuntu (2006-2008). Imagine, you can now go into an IBM dealer and ask to buy your notebook with Linux, how cool is that? how did that happen? did the world suddenly realise Linux is better than Windows? – the answer is NO! The marketing efforts of these companies had proven worth while, as the concept of using Linux as a desktop became common in recent years.

Step 4: Training and Certification

If your Open Source project is UberGeek targeted only, than you have a very slim chance of making it big. Lowering the bar on the requirements for the adaptation of an Open Source project is highly important and can be mostly achieved by training and certification. The training makes it possible for people to learn more about an Open Source project, while the certification makes the project seem more desirable and exclusive.

Why do people seek M$ and Ci$co certifications? simple, because they know these certifications mean something to manager level people and decision makers. The certification is a written (actually printed) proof that you know what you are talking about and that you are truly a professional working in the field of that Open Source project.

Conclusion:

If all of the above are met, you are surely on your way to create the next big Open Source project – and you are on your way to world fame and rock-star feeling.