RE: GNOME's Target Markets

["Murray Cumming" <murrayc murrayc com>]

>> Calvin Klein is (was?) cool because cool people used it. Cool made
>> popular. Popular meant not cool. People moved on to Prada, Gap, or
> whatever.
>
> This is not a helpful analogy.  People can try out new clothing brands
> with zero opportunity or switching costs.  And they know what a pair of
> jeans is.

With the LiveCDs (and soon the VMPlayer images) it is almost that easy.
They are doing it now, and that's why Ubuntu's user base is growing so
insanely quickly. However, a) We need to push the GNOME brand instead of
just the Ubuntu brand [1], and b) We need to create associations for the
brand that they are trying.

> How many of the people we want to target actually know what an
> "operating system" or a GUI or a "desktop shell" is?

On their level, it's a computer. A cool, friendly, beautiful computer that
makes life good. They need computers that have GNOME. They don't need to
explain what a desktop is to their friends as long as they explain that
they have a computer with GNOME and they should too.

It's almost as hard to explain what a computer is. But we don't need to.

Forgive my desparate amateurism. Save us.

Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com