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Changing face of developer marketing
Posted On December 15, 2007 by Rose Mary filed under Miscellaneous
The sabbatical, which I took during the first half of this year helped me to spend a lot of time in doing things which I always wanted to do. Most of these were personal and nowhere related to technology, programming or other stuff our readers may be interested in.
I spend considerable time, in playing around with a number of new technologies and frameworks that were mushrooming all around me. I did play a role which is a subtle more than a casual observer in a few Open Source projects ( I am still hooked on to a few as I write these). And these thought me a number of important lessons in marketing.
I have been following a number of development projects from virtually Day 1 and quite a few within a few days or weeks of it been announced. These include Django, TurboGears, Symfony, Pylons, Rails, IronPython, Dojo, Jinja, Diamanda wiki and quite a few not so famous projects.
This is not an article which is meant to compare the specific merits and demerits of these tools or technologies. But what I am more interested is how the entire cycle of developer-to-developer marketing work and how popularity of a technology soars up as developers communicate with each other.
Redux
Ten years back, all software vendors used to sell their products through conferences, events and print advertisements. That was the best way to address developers. Developers and other geeks used to flock into such conferences, see the advertisements and then take decisions.
In India and even abroad, a major way to reach developers were through training institutes or centers. You have academic training program on -> you have developers buying into the courses, -> customers starts to bet on your technology-> they invest into projects -> there are ready made developers willing, and lapping up your technology. The entire workflow was simple. Developers need better jobs and better salaries. The cutting edge technologies always paid more. It was a simple world.
From a macro point of view things have not really changed. But from a micro point of view much has changed.
Way back in nineties, a developer focused company such as Microsoft used to run a very focused strategy. When COM was introduced in 1996 (despite all the issues it carried), it ran campaigns, PR pitches and popularized the technology that a million COM jobs was created by the media.
It is another fact that very few developers understood COM at that point of time. However, MS managed to ensure that a million developers moved from a traditional software development model to component based model, and the to COM+ and on to .Net.
This was indeed true of almost all other large monoliths. A company like IBM ( who is championing the cause of Open Source these days) is recorded to have been reluctant to even offer 30 day trial packs of their popular software.
There are other examples of SAP, Oracle and Sybase who followed a very strict marketing strategy when they addressed end users and developers alike.
Demonstration software marketing was only meant for shareware and donationware companies. However the introduction of the cheaper CD media changed all that. Soon you had trialware shipping CDs and then the Internet and Java happened.
Java changed a lot
Though Open Source and Linux existed many years before, the real impact came only in the new century. Much before that Java and Sun Microsystems changed the way you addressed the 'developer marketing' issues.
Sun's campaign with Java was perhaps one of the best marketing scripts. Idea was simple, they talked directly to the developer. They spoke of direct benefits to developers in terms of more power in their hands at negligible costs. Sun brought in a cultural change that was indeed revolutionary!
Sun's ideas were happening. They were offering something totally free for the developer, to write software across all platforms. This was not a trialware. It was independent of the operating system. And above all, here was a revolutionary language that was a boon for the hassled C++ developers.
Going Community-centric
Developer Networks and developer communities existed much before Java. But they were heavily orchestrated by the vendors themselves. The best example is that of Microsoft. Microsoft have been running developer programs for many years. However, almost everything was well managed by Microsoft evangelists. Even today their evangelists does a fantastic job of managing developers well, and that is something many other big names still need to understand.
Though Sun did a lot of handholding in the initial days, Java developer groups mushroomed across the globe independent of any backing from Sun Microsystems. And this forced many other vendors to follow some of the new rules set by Java marketing guys. Soon you had companies offering 30 to 180 day trial versions. Some started offering free developer licenses and a new economy was booming.
Internet changes equations
Internet's grew exponentially in the late nineties and this changed the way developer marketing was perceived. Soon you had small start ups selling developer tools off the net. They were running support groups, developer forums and providing patches and updates all over the net. E-Commerce helped them accept payments for licenses and support. The size of the company rarely mattered anymore. And the geography mattered even more less.
There was a spate of new companies with new ideas who changed the way developer relations changed.
Open Source adds up
In the last few years, Open Source made a huge difference. Open Source and Free Software has changed the rules of business even more. And developers loved it even more. Now you could peer into the entire code and it was all still free. Moreover you can modify the code, rewrite it and re-release it too. Support was available in true community style, through user groups. You only need to pay when you needed professional support. You can also make money out off other peoples code.
Soon open source code repositories came up and hosting an open source product itself was free. Web sites such as Sourceforge and Freshmeat and then now even code.google.com is in that direction.
Web 2.0 adds up the spice
Blogging and wiki allowed developers to express themselves. Soon developers started talking about their work, and it became more and more interesting for other developers. The new age phenomenon of blogs, wikis and interactive forums acted as a strong vehicle for developers to communicate with each other. Blogging itself became a very powerful tool for marketing.
In the past three years there have been a number of new web frameworks which in terms of sheer growth rates have surpassed the established names in software development. Consider the example of RubyonRails (better known as Rails).
RubyonRails was harvested out off a project called BaseCamp. The project was managed byDavid Heinemeier Hansson who also did most of the coding. Hansson after announcing Rails and releasing it as an open source project, simply started bogging about it. Soon other developers started using Rails and they started talking about the product. Developers started writing patches, improvements and articles on Rails, and more developers took notice off it. Soon you had a bunch of developers evangelizing the product.
With a number of Java developers suddenly discovering the web application development is more fun using Rails than with other tools, there was a new fillip to the movement! Today Rails is considered as the biggest application to come up since Java.
Yet another classic example is that of Django, which is considered as the best of the breed of Python frameworks. A bunch of developers at a newspaper company in downtown Kansas spent two years in creating a framework to host their company web sites. And a new framework was born. With Guido Von Rossum saying that Django is his favorite framework, the movement behind Django is strong. Django has now attracted over 2000 developers and there are some hundred odd web applications written using Django.
Remarkable considering the fact some companies have to spent a million dollars and more to reach the same level of popularity.
If you take a sample of all the frameworks that has captured the imagination of developers lately ninenty per cent are basically an offshoot of a project ( or harvested out off a project). Most of them have been created by individuals or a pair of developers, who in turn managed to get a dozen other interested. From there it has been viral marketing. Some of the other examples are Pylons, Symfony, Spring framework, Mochikit and Dojo.
What about the economics?
You may wonder how the developer of the original software benefit from all these?
This is a tricky one. Let me ask a rhetorical question? If Hansson or Holovaty ( Adrian Holovatty, developer of Django) tried to sell the frameworks as closed source product, they would very likely would have failed.
Today with consultancy, book assignments, endorsements, and future development contracts both developers are expected to make a lot in cash and kind. They are already celebrities in their own rights. And developers connect with them instantly.
Does this mean that a closed source developer company can use the same tricks?
Yes. IBM and Sun has already succeeded in luring developers with their open source initiatives. In fact Microsoft is offering lots of freebies ( which is as good as Open Source) to developers. This is something Microsoft has learned recently. That is one of the reasons you have 20,000 plus Microsoftians blogging. And believe me this is just a start!
Conclusion
You do not require a million bucks to capture developer mindshare. It is the right approach with some freebies (free code is even better) that can help you the best.
I spend considerable time, in playing around with a number of new technologies and frameworks that were mushrooming all around me. I did play a role which is a subtle more than a casual observer in a few Open Source projects ( I am still hooked on to a few as I write these). And these thought me a number of important lessons in marketing.
I have been following a number of development projects from virtually Day 1 and quite a few within a few days or weeks of it been announced. These include Django, TurboGears, Symfony, Pylons, Rails, IronPython, Dojo, Jinja, Diamanda wiki and quite a few not so famous projects.
This is not an article which is meant to compare the specific merits and demerits of these tools or technologies. But what I am more interested is how the entire cycle of developer-to-developer marketing work and how popularity of a technology soars up as developers communicate with each other.
Redux
Ten years back, all software vendors used to sell their products through conferences, events and print advertisements. That was the best way to address developers. Developers and other geeks used to flock into such conferences, see the advertisements and then take decisions.
In India and even abroad, a major way to reach developers were through training institutes or centers. You have academic training program on -> you have developers buying into the courses, -> customers starts to bet on your technology-> they invest into projects -> there are ready made developers willing, and lapping up your technology. The entire workflow was simple. Developers need better jobs and better salaries. The cutting edge technologies always paid more. It was a simple world.
From a macro point of view things have not really changed. But from a micro point of view much has changed.
Way back in nineties, a developer focused company such as Microsoft used to run a very focused strategy. When COM was introduced in 1996 (despite all the issues it carried), it ran campaigns, PR pitches and popularized the technology that a million COM jobs was created by the media.
It is another fact that very few developers understood COM at that point of time. However, MS managed to ensure that a million developers moved from a traditional software development model to component based model, and the to COM+ and on to .Net.
This was indeed true of almost all other large monoliths. A company like IBM ( who is championing the cause of Open Source these days) is recorded to have been reluctant to even offer 30 day trial packs of their popular software.
There are other examples of SAP, Oracle and Sybase who followed a very strict marketing strategy when they addressed end users and developers alike.
Demonstration software marketing was only meant for shareware and donationware companies. However the introduction of the cheaper CD media changed all that. Soon you had trialware shipping CDs and then the Internet and Java happened.
Java changed a lot
Though Open Source and Linux existed many years before, the real impact came only in the new century. Much before that Java and Sun Microsystems changed the way you addressed the 'developer marketing' issues.
Sun's campaign with Java was perhaps one of the best marketing scripts. Idea was simple, they talked directly to the developer. They spoke of direct benefits to developers in terms of more power in their hands at negligible costs. Sun brought in a cultural change that was indeed revolutionary!
Sun's ideas were happening. They were offering something totally free for the developer, to write software across all platforms. This was not a trialware. It was independent of the operating system. And above all, here was a revolutionary language that was a boon for the hassled C++ developers.
Going Community-centric
Developer Networks and developer communities existed much before Java. But they were heavily orchestrated by the vendors themselves. The best example is that of Microsoft. Microsoft have been running developer programs for many years. However, almost everything was well managed by Microsoft evangelists. Even today their evangelists does a fantastic job of managing developers well, and that is something many other big names still need to understand.
Though Sun did a lot of handholding in the initial days, Java developer groups mushroomed across the globe independent of any backing from Sun Microsystems. And this forced many other vendors to follow some of the new rules set by Java marketing guys. Soon you had companies offering 30 to 180 day trial versions. Some started offering free developer licenses and a new economy was booming.
Internet changes equations
Internet's grew exponentially in the late nineties and this changed the way developer marketing was perceived. Soon you had small start ups selling developer tools off the net. They were running support groups, developer forums and providing patches and updates all over the net. E-Commerce helped them accept payments for licenses and support. The size of the company rarely mattered anymore. And the geography mattered even more less.
There was a spate of new companies with new ideas who changed the way developer relations changed.
Open Source adds up
In the last few years, Open Source made a huge difference. Open Source and Free Software has changed the rules of business even more. And developers loved it even more. Now you could peer into the entire code and it was all still free. Moreover you can modify the code, rewrite it and re-release it too. Support was available in true community style, through user groups. You only need to pay when you needed professional support. You can also make money out off other peoples code.
Soon open source code repositories came up and hosting an open source product itself was free. Web sites such as Sourceforge and Freshmeat and then now even code.google.com is in that direction.
Web 2.0 adds up the spice
Blogging and wiki allowed developers to express themselves. Soon developers started talking about their work, and it became more and more interesting for other developers. The new age phenomenon of blogs, wikis and interactive forums acted as a strong vehicle for developers to communicate with each other. Blogging itself became a very powerful tool for marketing.
In the past three years there have been a number of new web frameworks which in terms of sheer growth rates have surpassed the established names in software development. Consider the example of RubyonRails (better known as Rails).
RubyonRails was harvested out off a project called BaseCamp. The project was managed byDavid Heinemeier Hansson who also did most of the coding. Hansson after announcing Rails and releasing it as an open source project, simply started bogging about it. Soon other developers started using Rails and they started talking about the product. Developers started writing patches, improvements and articles on Rails, and more developers took notice off it. Soon you had a bunch of developers evangelizing the product.
With a number of Java developers suddenly discovering the web application development is more fun using Rails than with other tools, there was a new fillip to the movement! Today Rails is considered as the biggest application to come up since Java.
Yet another classic example is that of Django, which is considered as the best of the breed of Python frameworks. A bunch of developers at a newspaper company in downtown Kansas spent two years in creating a framework to host their company web sites. And a new framework was born. With Guido Von Rossum saying that Django is his favorite framework, the movement behind Django is strong. Django has now attracted over 2000 developers and there are some hundred odd web applications written using Django.
Remarkable considering the fact some companies have to spent a million dollars and more to reach the same level of popularity.
If you take a sample of all the frameworks that has captured the imagination of developers lately ninenty per cent are basically an offshoot of a project ( or harvested out off a project). Most of them have been created by individuals or a pair of developers, who in turn managed to get a dozen other interested. From there it has been viral marketing. Some of the other examples are Pylons, Symfony, Spring framework, Mochikit and Dojo.
What about the economics?
You may wonder how the developer of the original software benefit from all these?
This is a tricky one. Let me ask a rhetorical question? If Hansson or Holovaty ( Adrian Holovatty, developer of Django) tried to sell the frameworks as closed source product, they would very likely would have failed.
Today with consultancy, book assignments, endorsements, and future development contracts both developers are expected to make a lot in cash and kind. They are already celebrities in their own rights. And developers connect with them instantly.
Does this mean that a closed source developer company can use the same tricks?
Yes. IBM and Sun has already succeeded in luring developers with their open source initiatives. In fact Microsoft is offering lots of freebies ( which is as good as Open Source) to developers. This is something Microsoft has learned recently. That is one of the reasons you have 20,000 plus Microsoftians blogging. And believe me this is just a start!
Conclusion
You do not require a million bucks to capture developer mindshare. It is the right approach with some freebies (free code is even better) that can help you the best.