Re: OpenCD & GNOME

[Dave Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi,

Claus Schwarm a écrit :
> I'm afraid you gotta be a litte bit more precise: Who should care about
> these claims? Windows users?

I'll try to explain...


We are involved in marketing GNOME.

90%+ of the world is running Windows. Of that 90%+, quite a few are 
hobbyists who haven't even heard of us.

So we should try to change that.

There are more people prepared to install something on what they already 
have than there are prepared to chuck out what they have to install a 
new system. So getting GNOME applications built for Windows out to 
people makes sense.

We want people to install an application, say "that's nice", and know 
that it's a GNOME application. GNOME is our brand, it's what we're 
trying to spread.

We want people installing GNOME applications on Windows to know that 
there is A Better Way (TM) - that these same applications work well on 
the GNOME desktop, and that there are a bunch of other applications 
available too.


So why work with the OpenCD? Because they have already done the work of 
nicely packaging a bunch of applications (including lots of GTK+ apps) 
for Windows. And at the moment, there is no GNOME branding on that CD at 
all, so people don't know that this software is coming from a bigger 
community and that there's more software behind it.

A windows user running a bunch of GTK+ applications is a GNOME user in 
the making (or a GNOME user who hasn't realised it yet). That's the 
message we want to get out to people.

> Try to imaging a Windows users who has never heard about GNOME before.
> To them this reads like:
>
>  "Humpfty desktop software for free on Windows"
>
> If you read it like that, you get a good impression what they will
> think: "WTF is Humpfty?"

I like the idea of people asking themselves (and others) "What is GNOME?"

> I really fail to understand you here. Why use the OpenCD? Maybe because
> the point of the CD is to feed people piece by piece? Let them explore
> the options in small steps?

The OpenCD is *ideal* for mainstream PC magazine cover CDs. Those CDs 
are shipped to hobbyists, the install rate off them is low, but some of 
these magazines have *big* circulations.

We should be working with the OpenCD to get the CD shipped to as many 
people as possible, and making sure that GNOME has a brand presence in 
there. We should be contacting magazines asking them to include the CD, 
and offerring to write short articles on what's on the CD. We want 
people to get the message that installing GNOME software on Windows is 
putting them on the path to a happier computer usage.

Cheers,
Dave.

--
David Neary
bolsh gimp org