[asterisk-biz] Fascinating conversation with a prospective customer

[Komnieve Singh]

Wanted feedback on something,

A customer called in for a hosted dialer service we're offering (
www.asteriskdialer.com). The initial conversation was along the lines of how
to use that system, but it rapidly came to having a hosted IVR that could
provide reservation systems for his transportation company.

He runs a small business and has about 4-5 Taxis, the interesting thing was
that when I mentioned that the same product could be used for other
organizations he felt I was somehow trying to steal his idea. I tried to
explain the concept of open source etc... that the Dialplan itself isn't all
that complicated and that it wouldn't really harm him in anyway if other
companies used it but he insisted and called it a 'gangster move'. Granted
this is a significantly smaller client than we normally work with, and we
really wouldn't take it without the prospect of future growth, but I was
taken aback by his feeling of intellectual entitlement to the prospect of
having a hosted reservation system.

I know we haven't open sourced our internal projects for various reasons,
and this may strike everyone as hypocritical, but I had no intention of
harming this individuals business in any way - in fact I thought that by
allowing others to use and modify whatever we developed for his company he
would understand the positive ramifications. Specifically because his
resources are severely constrained.

There is huge potential for all the dialplans that are out there for a very
wide range of companies - we recently sponsored a project at UCI (University
of California Irvine) to develop an interface to graphically represent
dialplans not too long ago but haven't released to the community yet largely
because the mapping gets complicated and needs some extra work. I'll be more
than happy to open source it now instead of later if someone is willing to
step up and make it more user friendly, we've currently been waiting for our
internal team to have some time - which hasn't been forthcoming.

But this all brings me back to my main point - when dealing with perceived
intellectual rights - is it possible to not isolate people who feel some
ownership of an idea thats been had by a multitude of people before them?
How does one go about not insulting them, or not coming across as
threatening while still being able to explain the benefits they can get by
sharing 'their' idea? I haven't had good experience with avoiding the
subject in its entirety.

Komnieve Singh
Systems Architect
Skyy Consulting
www.skyyconsulting.com
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