Re: How interested in promoting GTK apps? [was Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?]

[Alex Hudson <home alexhudson com>]

On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 22:43 +0100, Quim Gil wrote:
> We are saying that GNOME is not a product downloadable by itself but
> something that can be just tasted and tested through a disto and that
> the strong label in Desktop Linux.

I think actually we're talking about what value 'GNOME' might have as a
brand, and what that brand should represent. 

> Apart from this, if Abiword is part of the GNOME project I don't see why
> the GNOME marketing team should discard the possibility of promoting it
> also in its MS Windows, if this is one of the best products we have.

I don't think it should either - for one thing, if Abi gets great
OpenDocument support, that puts it in a position where people could
offer it as a file viewer/reader option when publishing OD format
documents for people who are unable to access them - OOo is never going
to fulfil this task.

I would see the role of GNOME apps elsewhere much like the OS X apps
that have w32 ports - iTunes, while running on Windows, is clearly not a
Windows application, and I think PC users with iPods are being turned
onto OSX through such applications (well, a friend of mine is doing
exactly that right now: I suspect it's common, but I don't know how
common).

I don't think there is anything wrong with giving people w32 versions of
Free Software, but telling them that they are GNOME apps (for example).
I think there probably is a strong 'gateway drug' effect, and if people
begin to want GNOME apps, they will begin to demand the best environment
to run those apps (GNOME itself). And to that end, I think being able to
refer to GIMP/Abi/etc. as GNOME apps rather than GTK+ apps would be a
bonus - I think it's a lot easier to explain to users why they would be
interested in GNOME than GTK+ for a start ;o)

Cheers,

Alex.