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That is a good point. I am seeing XOOPS as a liability. That had never occured to me. But I have to ask myself why. The fact is that it is a liability because it is such a complete product. If it were a hlf complete Java Portal System (there are enough of them out there) I would not care about advertising it. I do not care about advertising Lotus Domino either.

The difference is the price of entry. People see Lotus Domino and realize that they would spend a lot of money to reproduce my system. If people see that it uses an incomplete portal system, and they see a large investment of time and effort to make it work. They find out it uses a complete easy to use, cheap to modify system, with a thriving community and they think I can go elsewhere or do it themselves.

Funny, these are all strenghts of XOOPS that I point out to existing clients when presenting Xoops. Yet I feel that they are a liability when marketing a system to others. Maybe I need to adjust my outlook. Try to see if I can make money while helping the community. I am not planning of charging an arm and a leg, and I feel that I do good work (especially in corp web design).... Maybey I am not stressing the main product enough. Service. Not Software.

I will think it over some more. Thanks for a different perspective. Even if it took a while to get on the same page.

JMass

Can I just jumped in here and just say my piece.

I am an IT Manager and in my position, actually encourage my vendors to supply open source solutions to me.

1. I know it has a lower overhead
2. I know it can be supported by ourselves if we need to.

On your questions on GPL - well that has been answered. IMHO you can "sell your service" to deliver an enhanced product, packaged under your own product name, provided you do not remove the credits from the source code. Not everyone like to clutter their website with logo of PHP, Apache, Linux, mySQL, XOOPS, etc. As you can see at my website, I dedicated one page to explain the technologies and the Open Source contributors to the site.

On the subject of ethics - your only problem as I see it is with your competitors, not your clients. Therefore I believe it is beneficial to tell your customers you are using Open Source, therefore enabling you to deliver a lower cost software, which is what I (as a customer) wants. And if your competitor decide to deliver Open Source solution, then it is a matter of your excellent service and expertise that will distinguish you from all the other fly by night Open Sources consultants.

I trust that will give you the assurance to proceed with your plans?

I am in principle prefer to see credits to XOOPS displayed on at least one page.

I likewise come from an IT manager background. I was the network administrator for a large hotel. I agree with you in every way.

After hearing the posts above, and considering the basis of my consulting business (excellent customer service) I will definately credit XOOPS in my new product.

I will still rename my offering, as branding is very important. I own my company, I do not own Xoops. However, I will be sure to include XOOPS in some sort of "powered by" credit. (Not on my site; I hate the clutter as mentioned above, but in the offered product description).

I am now glad that I posted this question, as I have reversed my decision to not advertise the XOOPS components of my offering.

Thank you for the insight. You have changed my mind.

JMass

You are most welcomed. I shall now sit in my cave and meditate on the meaning of profit.

well i think we're back on track now..

but maybe changing the tactic slightly, what you're saying is very good and can be done. but competitors will find out..

what maybe better to do is sell your services to the client and full support of the product and everything and tell them the whole software package is free, but you're charging for the hosting and the setting up, maintaining, and support of the product including any future upgrades and on going updates.. they pay you for the service & support then, and plug the fact that open source is the best thing since sliced bread.. which means it has full community support, and they not paying for an inferior product compared to commercial closed source systems, i would say it's probably even more secure too.. i mean.. for example.. microsoft servers and software gets hacked all the time and u pay for that? so just cos it's closed source doesn't mean it's the best product..

there are lots of ways you could plug and convince your clients to go with you rather than your competitors :)

Just to give you an example,

A few months ago a web design company proposed a full revamp of my company site for $xxK. I objected as I realised a lot of the cost was due to the commercial software they are using, and not only that, a lot of re-inventing wheels along the way.

I told them to re do their proposal again but this time using XOOPS or other similar OS CMS and I will tell them how to do it, they just have to work on the art/design.

Believe it or not, they walked out of the boardroom.

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I would not have walked out

as for monty above:
[qoute]what maybe better to do is sell your services to the client and full support of the product and everything and tell them the whole software package is free, but you're charging for the hosting and the setting up, maintaining, and support of the product including any future upgrades and on going updates[/qoute]

I think that is what I will do. It makes a lot more sense. They would not get a license to any of the components, commercial, open source, or otherwise if it is hosted anyways. This only works in a hosted solution, because in an onsite installation, they need to buy Lotus and Icewarp licenses.

I think that hosted only will give me the best flexability to do what monty describes above.

My new plan is to integrate (authentication and communication - not code) these seperate products, rebrand the total package for my company, be very vocal about the components "my portal system is made of" pointing out the great advantages of each, and charge only for the design and hosting.

Thank you all for the feed back. This is just what I was looking for.

JMass

I just finished reading this really interested thread. I just want to say :
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This is actually what I do and it's working pretty good.

Customers are happy because the cost of implementing a XOOPS site is less then any other commercial solution and the quality is nearly the same. And there is no limits in what you can do with XOOPS, except your imagination.

My customers are happy to invest in a professionnal website that I can customize to suit their exact needs.

Customers win because they are satisfied and it did not cost them a fortune. I win because I can pay the bills . The XOOPS community wins because I redistribute any improvments I make.

Everybody wins ! Isn't it fabulous ?

Just my 0.02 !