Why Users Dumped Your Open Source App for Proprietary Software

“So I asked several people, especially open-source-friendly
techies, about the times they seriously experimented with or used
an open source app — and ended up using a proprietary
application after all. I’m not speaking of a “trial” scenario in
which someone downloaded an open source app, poked at it for a
couple of hours, and decided, ‘Eh.’ I’m thinking more about
situations in which they (or the department, or the company) were
prepared to commit to using the software (for personal or business
purposes) and decided on a non-open-source option instead.

“My aim is not to diminish open source; quite to the contrary.
My view is that — to use ordinary marketing terms
— to sell an open source app you have to understand
and respond to the sales objections. An open source project (or at
least those in it who are thinking, ‘How do we get more users?’)
has to understand the ways in which it might ‘lose to the
competition’ before it can address the problem.”

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