On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 1:53 AM, Fred Jones<[email protected]> wrote: > > But he hasn't accepted this. Are there any good arguments we can use > to persuade him? I feel he has nothing to lose in releasing the code, > but we have to convince him of that.
Fred, show him how other businesses are succeeding with Drupal and how they choose to contribute back. There are several Drupal case studies on the front page of Drupal.org and many more listed here http://drupal.org/success-stories . That will provide a business friendly context for sharing code. e.g. Sony Music sponsors major multilingual improvements in Drupal 6, http://drupal.org/node/383954 Also challenge the business owner on the following issues: 1) Your business is now dependent on Drupal. Do you want your web platform to succeed or fail? If you want it to succeed, make contributions of marginal cost to you, now that the module is built, to make Drupal successful. 2) Do you plan to grow your business? If so, you will likely need to hire more Drupal developers in the future. The best recruiting for new talent is through developers who have an affinity for the features you are already developing. By putting you code in the public domain, you are effectively creating an interview process to determine who the most competent developers are for the features you want to develop. 3) What is your research and development budget? The users who are visiting your site are going to expect the business site to keep improving the user experience, integration with other services on the Internet, new features. Do you have the budget to develop everything your site visitors want, or would it be better to have research and development ongoing around your modules at little marginal cost to your business. Assure him that business execution, and not individual features on a website are the differentiators for a business. Kieran > > Thanks. >
