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.
(HTM) 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.
(IMG) "Take my money" meme