Sun CEO: Open source = free advertising
There are many reasons to love open-source software, but Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz thinks that one of its biggest benefits is free advertising. As Schwartz suggests, developers don’t spend money. They spend time. That time spent with your technology, then, equates to free advertising, which advertising can presumably be be leveraged deeper into a developers’ organization:
[W]e freely distribute our key software assets all over the world [because] if we didn’t…users and developers might pick someone else’s free product (or simply use the one they assume to be free). And if they picked someone else’s product on which to build their business or their application, Sun becomes a reseller – which isn’t our mission or business model….
By being freely distributed, our products build their own audiences. And using the products, from Glassfish to ZFS or NetBeans, creates a branding experience (and a wildly positive one, if we’re doing our jobs well). So why don’t we advertise in traditional outlets? Well, every day, the number of people using our products, getting that positive branding experience, eclipses nearly all major newspapers globally, combined.
Sun CEO: Open source = free advertising | The Open Road – CNET News
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