[mixmax]

It's obvious that you, and most people on this site, are hackers. We are, however, a minority.

My post was primarily aimed at explaining the difference in mentality between hackers and business people. Maybe I failed to convey that properly.

Business people have another mentality, different core values, and different goals and reasons for doing things than hackers. If you can grok this mentality you will find that you can outperform free. Both as in beer and as in freedom.

I once worked with a business guy that had a yearly budget of around $200 million, and his stance was that if someone wanted him to use something they had better sell it really well or he wouldn't use it. The whole process of selling, procurement, contracts, delivery, etc. was important to him. Both because this is what he valued (just like people here would have a hard time buying something they knew was coded in a flaky way) and because it gave him plausible deniability and removed responsibility in the sphere of corporate games. If he had used open-source software there would be noone to point the finger at if it didn't work - it sould be his responsibility.

And buying decisions are usually placed with business poeple , not hackers.

If you want to sell software to companies you need to understand these processes.