asterisk users - Oct 2005 - My contribution to the issue of code- reversal

Four years ago, I faced a real dilemma in my business: the Visual Voice PRI
dll had a bug that considered unanswered any call after ringing for 20
seconds. This bug was in fact killing my business, because for international
calling, the setup of the call was already close to 20 seconds on many
cases. Furthermore, the vendor, Artisoft, had cowardly sold the software to
Dialogic, and Intel-Dialogic had killed the product. There was no support. I
had to bite the bullet and buy a reverse-assembler (IDA-Pro), from a Belgium
company. I had to lock myself down in the lab for a week, until I understood
the location of exactly the right byte that was wrong, and replaced it at a
binary level for a 40 hex. Bingo. I made a living out of selling my pre-paid
platform for another two years, until I adapted Asterisk to replace Dialogic
and now I am paying my bills thanks to Asterisk. If I had not solved, my
existing clients would have looked elsewhere for a solution, and I had
failed to sell more switches. If Visual Voice had been open-source, I would
not had faced the terrible pressure to understand every single step of
assembler code required. So we need to reverse code and it surely is a
legitimate operation. Open source is far more convenient, but how do we
charge for the product? The business model is not there: the more popular
the product is, the more remote the possibility of the creator making any
money from it. Take Digium. The more experts on Asterisk pop-up, the less
demand is for Digium services. In fact, having tried Asterisk support from
Digium and others, I think the best Asterisk people --like Jeremy, Shido and
swk286-- are somewhere else. So the question is: how do we make sure that
the creator of the product makes even one dollar from every copy put in use
of his creation? The answer is: there is no answer. There is where Microsoft
wins. Additionally, Microsoft support services do know their products, and
if they fail to behave, they fix it. Digium made me once spend $150 and they
could not make res_odbc work, etc. I stopped using Digium support because
there is no way to know how many hours or dollars is going to take to fix
anything, while with others I pay for the result, not for the time. The
success is guaranteed. Regarding open-source-closed source, the future holds
a mixed-model in the store, and we are yet to discover it.

Hi

Broken into paragraphs, so people can actually read. I will not address
the content, as it has been rehashed ienough here and elsewhere. 

Please read, e.g. http://perens.com/Articles/Economic.html before
posting anything in reply to this thread or anything similar.

On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 08:12:07AM -0400, Federico Alves
wrote:
> Four years ago, I faced a real dilemma in my business: the Visual Voice PRI
> dll had a bug that considered unanswered any call after ringing for 20
> seconds. This bug was in fact killing my business, because for
international
> calling, the setup of the call was already close to 20 seconds on many
> cases. Furthermore, the vendor, Artisoft, had cowardly sold the software to
> Dialogic, and Intel-Dialogic had killed the product. There was no support. 
>
> I had to bite the bullet and buy a reverse-assembler (IDA-Pro), from a
Belgium
> company. I had to lock myself down in the lab for a week, until I
understood
> the location of exactly the right byte that was wrong, and replaced it at a
> binary level for a 40 hex. Bingo. I made a living out of selling my
pre-paid
> platform for another two years, until I adapted Asterisk to replace
Dialogic
> and now I am paying my bills thanks to Asterisk. 
>
> If I had not solved, my
> existing clients would have looked elsewhere for a solution, and I had
> failed to sell more switches. If Visual Voice had been open-source, I would
> not had faced the terrible pressure to understand every single step of
> assembler code required. So we need to reverse code and it surely is a
> legitimate operation. 
>
> Open source is far more convenient, but how do we
> charge for the product? The business model is not there: the more popular
> the product is, the more remote the possibility of the creator making any
> money from it. 
>
> Take Digium. The more experts on Asterisk pop-up, the less
> demand is for Digium services. In fact, having tried Asterisk support from
> Digium and others, I think the best Asterisk people --like Jeremy, Shido
and
> swk286-- are somewhere else. So the question is: how do we make sure that
> the creator of the product makes even one dollar from every copy put in use
> of his creation? The answer is: there is no answer. There is where
Microsoft
> wins. 
>
> Additionally, Microsoft support services do know their products, and
> if they fail to behave, they fix it. Digium made me once spend $150 and
they
> could not make res_odbc work, etc. I stopped using Digium support because
> there is no way to know how many hours or dollars is going to take to fix
> anything, while with others I pay for the result, not for the time. The
> success is guaranteed. Regarding open-source-closed source, the future
holds
> a mixed-model in the store, and we are yet to discover it.
-- 
Tzafrir Cohen         | tzafrir@jbr.cohens.org.il | VIM is
http://tzafrir.org.il |                           | a Mutt's  
tzafrir@cohens.org.il |                           |  best
ICQ# 16849755         |                           | friend

On Monday 10 October 2005 08:12, Federico Alves wrote:
> reverse code and it surely is a legitimate operation. Open source is far
> more convenient, but how do we charge for the product? The business model
> is not there: the more popular the product is, the more remote the
> possibility of the creator making any money from it. Take Digium. The more
> experts on Asterisk pop-up, the less demand is for Digium services. In
This is *precisely* why I believe that Digium's current model is terribly 
wrong.  They are competing with the very people that make Digium money.  

In my humble opinion, I believe that Digium should not offer support to end 
users.  I believe that Digium should not offer hardware sales to end users.  
You simply cannot have distribution and sell direct -- it does NOT work and 
you only end up alienating your distributors, the very people who find your 
customers in the first place.

Think about it: How many times do you think someone is going to point a 
potential customer to you if you just turn around and sell for the same price 
they sell at or lower?  Where's their incentive?

Distribution (in my opinion, again) is a manufacturer's best friend.  You
can
have a thousand distributors scattered around the world, digging out 
customers in every kind of niche imaginable.  The distributors and resellers 
know their market segments and have the relationships with the end users 
already. Distributors already have the trust of the end users, something 
Digium will find much harder to earn.

Again, think about it: If a guy you've been dealing with for 5 years says
that
this new piece of equipment will do what you want, do you find it easier to 
believe him than if you just found someone on the internet claiming the same 
thing?  What about if you did a little research and found that a full 50% of 
the reviews on this piece of equipment said it was marginal or hard to get 
working?  Would you try it on your own, or would you prefer if that guy you 
know said that he himself has gotten it to work and can help you with yours?

If Digium were to try and match this level of interaction they would have to 
have thousands of salespeople around the world drumming up business and 
trying to cultivate relationships with all the onesie-twosie buyers out there 
because let's face it, that's where the bulk of the sales will be. 
Finding
the Nufones of the world, the companies who know what they're doing and buy
a
LOT of equipment from you aren't exactly commonplace.  Let the distributors 
and reslellers work their own existing markets and business relationships.  
Give them the volume discounts and hell, maybe even offer them a few points 
more if they agree to stock $x of your equipment at all times.  YOUR 
infrastructure costs drop, YOUR support costs drop and your sales INCREASE.

As someone who's been working for an OEM for the last decade and has seen
both
sides of this coin, it's a no-brainer.

How about the consultant side of things?  How do you make your money when you 
are trying to cultivate and enitre business subculture around your product?  
Through licensing and support of the distribution and consultants.  You 
provide tier-1 support and training materials to registered consultants 
around the globe.  Perhaps a modest yearly license in exchange for a
"Digium
Certified Asterisk Professional" -- make the damn DCAP *MEAN* something 
instead of the meaningless acronym most of the people feel it is today!  
Don't just give a more-or-less textbook test and say "hey you're a
DCAP now!"
Make it mean something.  Give a REAL certificate, maybe those embossed gold 
stars with the year in them -- something physical, something they can hang 
with pride and show potential clients.  YES it costs money to do that, but 
you're trying to MAKE money with this!  Want ABE?  Get it through a licensed
Digium reseller.  Need ABE support?  Again, here's a list of certified ABE 
consultants.  Point them offsite to the wiki for a list of other consultants 
and IRC and the mailing lists for "self-serve" support.  It takes a
little
bit of infrastructure, sure, but again it's all about presentation.

You simply don't sell to end users on a web store if you've got
distribution.
All you end up doing is stabbing these people in the back, the very people 
who are getting you these customers in the first place!  You either have 
distribution and you work with them and cultivate business relationships with 
them, or you sell direct and pay the price in terms of a) not having the 
market penetration you want or b) have an insane number of sales employees to 
keep track of and trained in order to achieve the desired market penetration.  
You don't do both.

Similarly, you simply do not offer end-user support if you're trying to 
cultivate consultants.  You either create the infrastructure for the 
consultants to make their living supporting your products (knowlegebase, 
registered support network, "intranet", certification) or you support
your
product on your own and spend the money on increased customer service staff 
and overhead that way.  There are ways of doing both here (expensive support 
to end-users, hardware-only support within the warranty period, etc.) but 
it's trickier.

Wow.  That's a lot of text, and it's all just subjective opinion.  As I
said
though, I've been in this type of business (OEM) for the last ten years or
so
and I've seen manufacturers double-cross their distribution just to make the
sale.  Nine times out of ten, they don't get another opportunity from the 
same distributor.  Similarly, I've seen companies "take" support 
opportunities away from consultants.  Sometimes it's been ok because the 
consultant was inept or was way over his head, but sometimes the manufacturer 
simply undercut the consultant, and the consultant recommended other products 
the next time around.  It's a tricky game.

-A.