Strange Industry

In a recent post from Vendorprisey Thomas shared some marketing numbers for the software industry:

Salesforce.com’s sales and marketing costs, for example, typically hover between 50% and 70% of revenue, according to past financial statements. That’s huge compared to traditional software vendors where sales and marketing costs typically run between 20% and 25% of revenue

You are the customer. They sell you software for $$$. Then if you find problems using the product they ask you to create a bug report, and pay you zero for that work. Then they go and spend $ of your money on mailing you some half plastic paper ads. Then they ask you on ways to improve the product, features you are missing, etc (again zip for that work of helping develop the product). And they go spend more of your $ on leaflets or TV commercials. The time comes and you are told: your software is not longer supported, either upgrade to be safe (and pay us $$$) or be aware that your product might blow-up and kill your pet. And they go spend $ of your money on some magazine ad.

It's a strange industry. Basically sells brainwashing with software as byproduct. Then again, if that is what the customer wants, so be it.

Don't like it? Then take some fresh air with linux.