{"id":319,"date":"2009-06-04T02:28:16","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T07:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/04\/microisv\/"},"modified":"2009-09-17T13:36:54","modified_gmt":"2009-09-17T18:36:54","slug":"microisv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/04\/microisv\/","title":{"rendered":"MicroISV"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word microISV<\/em> is all business, in all the wrong ways.<\/p>\n

MicroISV stands for “Micro Independent Software Vendor”, which in plain english means a tiny software company, usually on the order of one or three people.<\/p>\n

Probably the best reason to buy software from such a small shop is passion<\/em>. People who build and sell their own software directly tend to care very deeply about it. Their program is their baby. Nobody in a microISV is just in it for the paycheck. No matter how cool<\/a> a large corporation is, at the end of the day everyone has to compromise on their dream to work together on it. But a one man shop never has to compromise or design by committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Micro Independent Software Vendor” doesn’t communicate this agile vision. It sounds like the same kind of turgid enterprise think that drove the world’s largest software company to rename Netbooks<\/a>, “low-cost small notebook PCs”<\/a>. (You just can’t make this stuff up!)<\/p>\n

Three people are never going to out-Big-Business a Big Business. So it just doesn’t make sense to label what they do with a Big Business Word<\/a>. (And by word, I mean several words, because that’s how Enterprise Speak works.)<\/p>\n

The most popular synonym for microISV I see in the Mac software scene is indy developer<\/a>. I think it’s a fine term — better than microISV by about a factor of IBM’s income. But there are many other excellent alternatives to “indie”, like boutique, nano, one-man, etc. The exact term isn’t important; and it need not be short. If someone wants to open their own “Hand Cyphered Soft-Wares Emporium<\/strong>“, then more power to them! What’s important is that their taxonomy reflect the culture of commitment that goes into their unique software.<\/p>\n

EDITED TO ADD: Small Batch Business<\/a> is another fantastic name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The word microISV is all business, in all the wrong ways. MicroISV stands for “Micro Independent Software Vendor”, which in plain english means a tiny software company, usually on the order of one or three people. Probably the best reason to buy software from such a small shop is passion. People who build and sell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[386,84,170,113,436,96,169,359],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming","tag-branding","tag-business","tag-diction","tag-mac","tag-microisv","tag-microsoft","tag-software-development","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":398,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}