OISV - Organization of Independent Software Vendors

[Mark0]

Seen this?

http://www.oisv.com/

Bye!

[mouser]

nice find - looks quite interesting.

[Renegade]

There's an article about DonationCoder in the Marketing articles there.  Wonder who wrote that one?

I didn't have time to read the whole thing, but I think I'll end up printing it today and reading it later.

Cheers,

Ryan

[Carol Haynes]

Personally I never sign up to websites that have no content until you register with them - I find it really offputting. Am I paranoid?

[mouser]

carol you are right, that is not good.

I am a bit wary about the organization - we'll have to see how well they live up to their admirable stated objectives.

Ryan, i gave them permission to reprint the article i wrote here
http://www.donationcoder.com/Articles/One/index.html

[Renegade]

carol you are right, that is not good.

Part of the point to it is that it is private. This lets people post things that they otherwise couldn't do in a public forum. If you've used private forums or news groups before, you'll know what I mean.

I am a bit wary about the organization - we'll have to see how well they live up to their admirable stated objectives.

Ryan, i gave them permission to reprint the article i wrote here
http://www.donationcoder.com/Articles/One/index.html

A lot of people are kind of hands off right now with a 'wait & see' attitude. So far things look pretty good though and I'm not too worried about any wierdness.

The primary sponsor and founders are from CoffeeCup. If you know Nick, you'll know that he's not one to fail. I'm friends with both Nick and Scott, so maybe I'm not the most impartial person out there.

The focus is really on the uISV that is profit motivated though. I suppose there might be a few freeware authors in there (I have some freeware), but it's basically people that are looking to make a living from writing and selling software.

Cheers,

Ryan

[Carol Haynes]

carol you are right, that is not good.

Part of the point to it is that it is private. This lets people post things that they otherwise couldn't do in a public forum. If you've used private forums or news groups before, you'll know what I mean.

I'm not expecting to post to their forums without registering (and I don't even need to read them if they want to be completely private) but when the home page articles cannot be read without registering that is ridiculous.

[mouser]

to tell the truth, the organization seems mostly focued on marketing, and so it's not really for my tastes, and not really a good match for me or for donationcoder (there is an article about why making freeware is bad for business and why to avoid giving discounts).

however, having said that, i can see how it would very much be a useful organization for small software companies to be able to band together and compete against the big companies (as long as it doesn't turn into a club for a few companies to have a vehicle to promote themselves).

[mouser]

it's woth noting that they are not (at least not currently) asking for any money to join - so that is a very positive sign.  the organization is mostly for small software developers, so it wouldn't be so strange if they wanted to restrict reading of the articles to people who want to join the organization.

[Renegade]

it's woth noting that they are not (at least not currently) asking for any money to join - so that is a very positive sign.  the organization is mostly for small software developers, so it wouldn't be so strange if they wanted to restrict reading of the articles to people who want to join the organization.

Another thing is that sometimes you don't want to be read by just everyone. I submitted an article that I would not publish publicly for several reasons. There are ups and downs, because not everyone will read it, but then again I don't want just everyone to read it either. But then there are other articles that I'd like to be widely available. Ups and downs for everything.

One thing about private articles is that you can publish security related things a bit easier. e.g. Information and experiences with licensing schemes. That's real hard to do publicly. 

[Carol Haynes]

Slightly bizarre really - anyone can sign up (as far as I can see ... not that I followed the links but it didn't say don't bother unless ....) so it isn't exactly private.

Why publish short extracts from some articles on the home page with a link to read the rest when you then can't without signing up.

I am not in principle against the idea of a private website but if you are going to put a public front on the website it should actually acheive something for the public. Obviously private issues can be discussed behind closed doors but I would guess the front page articles as shown now aren't particularly in need of privacy ???

[mouser]

well to be fair, they may want to show potential members the kind of articles that are available so they have some basis to know whether to join.

and we also don't know if they are letting anyone join.. though i suspect that they are.

[Renegade]

Slightly bizarre really - anyone can sign up (as far as I can see ... not that I followed the links but it didn't say don't bother unless ....) so it isn't exactly private.

Membership is verified. It's a long story, and I really don't want to get into it too much, but as I'm sure you're well aware, there are always some habitual trolls/flamers, etc. For example, if you check out alt.comp.shareware.authors you'll find at least 1 example of a very disturbed and disruptive person in there. To be honest, I find his posts humorous as they are just completely so far removed from reality and wacky that I can't help but laugh. However, most people don't find him very amusing.

It also serves to keep the community relatively clean from 'the dark side'. You just don't want hackers or spammers getting in, and usually they won't pass the pre-requisites needed to get in, such as having a real web site that isn't a spam or hacking related site. That's probably the most important thing.

[Renegade]

well to be fair, they may want to show potential members the kind of articles that are available so they have some basis to know whether to join.

and we also don't know if they are letting anyone join.. though i suspect that they are.

It's not open to just anyone to join (as far as I know and I'd bet I'm right). You need to be a developer or somehow legitimately in the community. Whether you own/run/work for a web hosting service, or develop or resell software - whatever it is - you just need to be legitimate. i.e. Not a spamware/hacker/cracker, etc.

e.g. Check some posts of comments at Slashdot - complete garbage written by kiddie techie wannabes that know nothing about technology ("I hate MS." "I hate Linux." "IE is stupid." "I have nothing better to do..."). That kind of stuff just wastes time and for busy people, it's just not worth wading through.

An excellent example of a great forum that is public is JoS. Another is WebWiz. They are nice and clean. Occasionally there's some junk posted at JoS, but it still maintains a lot of high quality posts from respectable people in the community.

[Carol Haynes]

Actually the sign up asks a lot of questions about your business so I guess if you aren't a business they may decide not to let you sign up.

[Renegade]

Actually the sign up asks a lot of questions about your business so I guess if you aren't a business they may decide not to let you sign up.

You don't need to be a "business" per se. There are lots of people that sell software but wouldn't call themselves a 'business'. It's just a filter to make sure that members are developers and software professionals.