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Attitudes toward free software

Although free software exists for quite some time, the acceptance of free software from the general population is minimal. This could be explained in customer loyalty terms:

  1. What are the expectations of our customers and what it will take to exceed them?
  2. What differentiates our company in the eyes of our customers?
  3. How do our interactions with our customers affect their satisfaction and buying behavior?
  4. Do we have any customer segments that require different treatment?
  5. How loyal is our customer base and how can we improve it?

The meaning of this is that consumers, like all people, are creatures of habbit, and will buy what they are used to buy, unless the service rendered is of very low quality. Besides, the small number of games in OSS makes acceptance to the home market quite low. On the other hand, the acceptance of free software in the server market is very large, with most of the Internet running on OSS servers, while the percentage of OSS in enterprises is rising. This is rather a proof that although corporate buyers also have customer loyalty, they also have different expectations from home users. Corporate buyers prefer to base their decissions more on cost-benefit analysis (which is a function of features and cost) than habbit.

The OSS communities

OSS software is developed by on-line communities. These communities operate as Virtual Organizations. The advantage in such cases is that whereas it is quite rare for single individuals with very specific common interests to be able to meet (due to distance, work hours etc), they can meet on-line quite easily. The other advantage of an on-line community is that it is a place for common minded people from all over the world to meet. When a community reaches a certain number of members, it could be even self-sustained, ie the withdrawall of every single individual could be overcome by another member. This is quite a usual fenomenon in OSS development teams, where developers come and go, but the software evolves. Furthermore, as in real-life communities, any problem of a member of the community is a problem of the community.