RE: university outreach project

["John Williams" <JWilliams business otago ac nz>]

> The problem is more
> listening to people talk about what they want, and then 
> figuring out what they
> *actually* need & want.

I am _so_ with you on that one Dave!
 
> > Where is the empirical information on what users want?
>
> We have some data on what people don't like about what GNOME 
> is right now... 
Cool!  Are you interested in sharing it?  What analyses have been
conducted so far?

> By the way, I don't think that we should lose sight of the 
> most important aspect
> of GNOME when marketting it - that is, that it's Free. Free 
> means that the power
> goes back to the user, not the software producer. Free 
> implies choice in the
> software we use. This is an enormously powerful idea if we 
> can manage to
> communicate it.
Again, right on!

Maybe this is something we could put our collective consciousness to
work on:

A simple explanation of how something so good (and better in many ways
than commercial offerings) can be free; and at the same time expressing
it in a way that emphasises freedom as opposed to free.  If we could
incorporate your point on shifting the power to the users, we would then
have, IMHO, the perfect tag line.

Maybe someone could offer a bounty on this:  Best way to express the
above sentiments in X words or less.  If you like, we could pick the top
20 or so and I could run some consumer testing on them.

P.S.  I am starting to think about writing up a grant request at my
school.  If you have any burning questions that could be answered with
around NZD$5,000 (with research design, analysis and reporting for free)
please let me know.  I will post further thoughts when I have them.

(Reminder: I am at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand.)