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 TA I B I

Uno studio sulle strategie di marketing e comunicazione per il software libero

OPEN SOURCE SUMMER SCHOOL 2012

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Outline

�  Case study on marketing and communication aspect

�  Comparison between communication models adopted by OSS producers

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CSS Distribution and Marketing

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Traditional Marketing

Social Media Marketing

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Open Source Producers

�  Corporate Distributions ¡  Industries ¡  SMEs

�  Open Communities

�  Sponsored

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Product Development, Marketing and Communication

Idea generation Idea screening Concept

developement and testing

Marketing Strategy Business analysis Commercialization

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Product Development

Idea generation • R&D department • Production Department • Sales Team • Employees • Customers • Competitors • External Sources • Market Research

Idea screening • Demand • Profitability • Payback period?

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The Case Study

�  Semi-structured interview �  Different roles interviewed

¡  CEOs ¡  Marketing director ¡  Sales Manager

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The interview

�  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?

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The interviewees

Company Employees FLOSS role

Engineering (CSS division)

6500

Engineering (OSS division)

50 Producer Integrator

Studio QWERTY 12 Integrator

Ubuntu (community) 400 Canonical 542 Community

Producer

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Engineering (CSS division)

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

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Engineering (CSS division)

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

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Engineering (CSS division)

Which communication channels do you adopt? �  Company website

¡  SEO

�  Magazines only for Public Administration �  Conference and Fairs

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Engineering (OSS division)

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

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Engineering (CSS division)

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

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Engineering (CSS division)

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

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Studio QWERTY

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.

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Studio QWERTY

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

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Studio QWERTY

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

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Ubuntu Community

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

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Ubuntu Community

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.

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Ubuntu Community

Which communication channels do you adopt? �  Website �  Social Media

¡  Twitter ¡  Facebook ¡  LinkedIn

�  Online Magazines �  Press release �  Events

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Communication Channel Comparison

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

"

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Conclusions

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�  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

Q&A

davide.taibi@uninsubria.it

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

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