Title: How I would sell OpenBSD as a salesperson | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 22 June 2022 | |
Tags: openbsd opensource business | |
Description: Let's have fun, I'm now a salesperson and I have to | |
convince customers to buy OpenBSD, here is how I would proceed. | |
# Introduction | |
Let's have fun today. I always wondered how I would sell OpenBSD | |
licences to customers if I was a salesperson. | |
This text is pure fiction and fun. The OpenBSD project is free of | |
charge and under a libre software licence. | |
Website of The OpenBSD Project | |
# Killer features | |
When selling a product, it's always important to talk about the killer | |
features, what makes a product a good one and why it would solve the | |
customer problems. | |
## Learn once | |
If you were to use OpenBSD, you certainly would have a slight learning | |
curve, but then the system is so stable over time that the acquired | |
knowledge would be reused from release to release. Most base tools in | |
OpenBSD are evolving while keeping compatibility with regard to how you | |
administrate them. | |
Can we say so for the Linux ecosystem which changes its sound and init | |
system every 5 years? Can we say so for Windows which revisites most | |
of its interface at every new release? | |
Learning OpenBSD is a good investment that will save you time later, so | |
you can use your computer without frustration. | |
# Secure by default | |
OpenBSD comes with strong security defaults, you don't have to tweak | |
anything, the development did it for you! You can confidently use your | |
OpenBSD computer, and you will be safe from all the bad actors | |
targetting mainstream systems. | |
Even more, OpenBSD takes care of your privacy and doesn't run any | |
telemetry, doesn't record what you type, doesn't upload any data. The | |
team took care of disabling microphone and webcam by faking their input | |
stream with empty data until you explicitely allow one or the other to | |
record audio/video. | |
## Community driven | |
Because you certainly don't want to suffer from big IT actors decisions | |
affecting your favorite OS, OpenBSD is community driven and take care | |
of not being infecting by big tech agendas. The system is made for the | |
developers, by the developers, and you can use it as a customer! | |
Doesn't this feel great to know the authors use their own software? | |
## No obsolescence / eco-friendly | |
Rest assured that your brand-new computer will still be able to run | |
OpenBSD in 20 years. The team is taking a special care of keeping | |
compatibility for older hardware until it's too hard to find spare | |
components. It's almost a lifetime of system upgrades for your | |
hardware! Are the competitors still supporting Sparc64 and 32-bit | |
PowerPC for a modern computer experience? I don't think so! The | |
installer is still available for floppy disk, I think this says it all! | |
## Very low maintenance | |
As OpenBSD is designed to be highly resilient and so simple that it | |
can't break, be sure you won't waste time fixing problems on your | |
system. With a FREE major update every six months and regular security | |
updates, your system keeps being bulletproof with no more maintenance | |
from you than running the update; more experienced users can even | |
automate this using the built-in and free of charge task scheduler. | |
## Licencing | |
OpenBSD is perfect for people who want to become rich! Think about | |
this, you love your OpenBSD system, and you want to make a product out | |
of it? Perfect! The licencing allows you to make changes to OpenBSD, | |
redistribute it, charge people for it, and you don't even have to show | |
a single line of your product source code to your customers. This is a | |
perfect licencing for people who would like to build proprietary | |
devices based on OpenBSD, a rock solid system. | |
Against all industry standards, in case you would improve your OpenBSD, | |
you are allowed to make changes to it without losing the warrantly | |
coming with the licensing. | |
## Technical support | |
If you ever need help, you will have direct access for free to the | |
mailing lists of the project, allowing you to exchange directly with | |
the people developping OpenBSD. | |
## Documentation | |
Don't be afraid to jump into OpenBSD from another operating system, we | |
took care of documenting everything you will need. We are very proud | |
of our documentation, and you can even use your OpenBSD system without | |
Internet connectivity and still being able to read the top-notch | |
documentation to configure your system to your needs. No more need to | |
use a search engine to find old blog posts with outdated and inaccurate | |
advice. | |
## Fast to install | |
You can install OpenBSD very fast by just answering to a few questions | |
about the setup. However, you should never need to install OpenBSD | |
more than once so most people will never notice about it. Experimented | |
users can even automate installation to spread OpenBSD to their family | |
without effort. | |
# Behind the scenes | |
Of course, as a good salesperson, I would have to avoid some topics | |
because this would make the customer lose interest into OpenBSD. | |
However, they could be turned as a positive fact: | |
* OpenBSD doesn't support Bluetooth, but you can see this as a security | |
feature. The code was entirely removed from the kernel because | |
Bluetooth is full of traps and could easily leak data over the air. | |
You certainly don't want that? | |
* You may think OpenBSD slow performance could hit your productivity, | |
but on the contrary it's a feature that will prevent you from losing | |
focus on what you are currently working on. Think about the Tortoise | |
and the Hare! | |
* Maybe your favorite software is proprietary and will not be provided | |
for OpenBSD, then your provider is entirely at fault because they don't | |
want to make their software compliant with OpenBSD strong quality | |
requirements to provide a working binary | |
* You may have heard some hardware won't run on OpenBSD, this can | |
happen for very niche hardware. The OpenBSD team is working hard to | |
give you the best experience on a selection of affordable hardware with | |
premium support. | |
# Conclusion | |
I hope you understood this was a fiction; OpenBSD is free and anyone | |
can use it. It has strength and weaknesses, as always it's important | |
to use the right tool for the right job. The team would be happy to | |
receive contributions from you if you want to improve OpenBSD, by doing | |
so you could help me improve my speech as a saleperson. | |
"Take my money" meme |