The purchasing department is the last place you'd want to call - purchasing is department people in the org. go through to buy things, not the other way around.
You'd either want to talk to some senior in IT security or anyone above them, upto including the CTO or someone in risk management/liability. Doing sales to those people is most likely expensive, probably costing $10k+ per client which would be the cost of someone going to networking events, visiting prospects, presentations, documents etc.
In my experience paying yearly is much preferred to paying monthly in large orgs. due to the process that has to be gone through to purchase something (Longer than a year can cause budgeting problems).
>You'd either want to talk to some senior in IT security or anyone above them, upto including the CTO or someone in risk management/liability. Doing sales to those people is most likely expensive, probably costing $10k+ per client which would be the cost of someone going to networking events, visiting prospects, presentations, documents etc.
This is why I'm suggesting something that can be sold online, at a price point that doesn't require per-customer sales effort. I don't have many $1000 per year customers, but I have a few; and I have a fair number of $500+ per year customers. I did not spend more sales effort on those customers than I did on my $100/year customers.
I say this as evidence that $1000/year is below the "high touch sales" threshold.
I mostly thinking you'd go to big companies with something at the $100k/year level for membership - including some influence in project direction, code review methods, audits, features etc.
Selling something online, could work but the question is what do they get for their money? a t-shirt, name on website etc. Though in a world of kickstarter it could work if done right. This is a $50/yr deal for most which is 20k people to get to that same $100k with a lot more community work to keep up with those people.
my main point here is that there is space between $50 and $100,000. Assuming OpenSSL doesn't have infrastructure, my suggestion is that they try to charge as much as they can and still stay under the level where you need sales.
$1000, from experience, is below the level where you need per-user sales.
>Selling something online, could work but the question is what do they get for their money? a t-shirt, name on website etc. Though in a world of kickstarter it could work if done right. This is a $50/yr deal for most which is 20k people to get to that same $100k with a lot more community work to keep up with those people.
I would suggest that for corporate sponsors, you make it more clear than Theo does that you are buying advertising, not donating money. I think selling a "I helped pay for software you use" website badge is a good way of doing that... but look at the mirrors.centos.org sponsors page. You are very clearly buying advertising space, in that case.
Heck, the CAs charge a lot of money for badges that mean nothing; The OpenSSL people could create a similar badge. "OpenSSL developer club auxiliary" or something.
You'd either want to talk to some senior in IT security or anyone above them, upto including the CTO or someone in risk management/liability. Doing sales to those people is most likely expensive, probably costing $10k+ per client which would be the cost of someone going to networking events, visiting prospects, presentations, documents etc.
In my experience paying yearly is much preferred to paying monthly in large orgs. due to the process that has to be gone through to purchase something (Longer than a year can cause budgeting problems).