Open for Business: How Some Sales Processes Don't Work for OSS

In a perfect world, the sales process for an open source business would be as simple as answering the phone and taking orders. Unfortunately, reality is seldom perfect, and the open source sales process faces a number of challenges. 

Chief among these is that companies have been conditioned to do business in a certain way, and while that standard system works fine when acquiring commercial software, the traditional model breaks down when it comes to open source software. (For the record, I use open source to mean software that is truly open--i.e., where the licensing cost is zero.)...

...In both the case of pre-sales and RFPs, I suggest that the client purchase a services project in order to explore an open source solution. Even if it takes a week or two, the cost of that time pales when compared to commercial software solutions that can run to hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of dollars.