One of the reasons why customers were deeply involved with FlashFiler, as well as the other TurboPower products, is due to what they received when they purchased a license. Any person purchasing a license for a component library received the source code for that library.
TurboPower's main means of communicating with the customers was via its newsgroups. A couple of the newsgroups thrived because they were filled with customers who, at some level, knew what was going on inside the product and talked about it. They were a boon to technical support because they could handle many of the day-to-day questions. The FlashFiler newsgroup was the leader in that regard.
Some customers reached that level of involvement because their business or employer depended upon the product. Others volunteered their time because they were intrigued by the product.
Eivind Bakkestuen, another FlashFiler customer, wrote that he purchased it for a hobby project. In order to help himself complete it, he volunteered the code for use in FlashFiler. He wasn't writing anything trivial. What he wrote was an Excel look-a-like import wizard for FlashFiler Explorer, our equivalent to SQL Enterprise Manager. It was something we'd always wanted but never felt like we had the time to write. As a result, Eivind ended up doing even more volunteer work on FlashFiler Explorer.
Does it get any better than customers giving you their time and effort? And Eivind wasn't the only one.
In this market, a big reason for this kind of customer participation was making the source code accessible.
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Sean Winstead
Tags: ISV, Customers