Re: FSF, terminology, and marketing

[Paul Cutler <pcutler gnome org>]

A couple different thoughts:

* The most important thing we can do as marketers is know our audience.  While I respect Brian's comment we should be sensitive to politics, it's really dependent on document we're writing and whom it is for.

* Most of our marketing is at end users - and for that reason, I prefer "Linux" as that is the common word used by journalists both in the open source press and the mainstream press.

* I don't know if I agree that having a good relationship with the FSF is that important.  The anecdotal feedback I have on their recent campaigns, including Windows 7 Sins and Bad Vista is that it does more harm than good.  While I have great respect for the work done in the past on multiple fronts, including the GNU utilities, the GPL licenses and more, GNOME needs to be relevant now and respectful of our current and potential future users.

* Brian, I was curious about an earlier statement you made:  "since we are a GNU project " - are we?  What does that mean?   Looking at the gnu.org website and fsf.org GNOME is not mentioned once.  Searching on gnu.org, the first search result that mentions GNOME is a 10 year old press release around GNOME 1.0.  What is our formal relationship with the FSF and GNU?

Those are my long answers.  My short answer - I agree with Andre, and I prefer reality.  I look forward to hearing the Advisory Board's recommendation as well.

Paul

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron sun com> wrote:

Shane:

Well I dont think many people outside of FSF care. Its harder to say
GNU/Linux and more people simply call it just linux. We should respect
the FSF but its not a big deal in my opinion. Its just politics.

It may be politics, but within the context of the GNOME marketing-list,
there should be some sensitivity to politics.  The GNOME Foundation does
have relationships with various governments and does try to encourage
them to use free and open source solutions, for example.  So, our
messaging should be consistent, and I think we should not discount
something in this forum for being "just politics".

Having a good relationship with the FSF is important.  At the moment, we
are doing a joint Women's Outreach program with them.  The GNOME
Foundation also has certain benefits, like the fact that we are able
to use the Software Freedom Law Center due to our free software status.
By working with the FSF, and following their recommendations, we may
find that more doors open, and we may find more opportunities to do
interesting and positive things with them and other free software
organizations.  Aside from the fact that promoting free software with
the terminology we use may be just a "good thing" for any free software
community to do.  If we choose not to follow their recommendations we
may be like that uncle who always says inappropriate things and never
gets invited to certain parties.

However, as I said before, we do need to consider how the terminology
we use affects our other partners, such as our advisory board members.
Improving our relationship with the FSF at the expense of our
relationship with others, or with the public at large, might not be a
good idea.  However, I do not think we can make a decision without first
talking about it amongst ourselves and with our advisory board members.
So, I think it is a good idea to do both before making any sort of
decision.

Brian

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