Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Shaun:

> > > I think we need to think about why we want end-users to use GNOME
> > 3.0. Or why we want them
> > > to use GNOME at all. Those are the messages we can market. (And we
> > know these, freedom,
> > > accessibility, usability, etc.)
> > To be frank, these are no benefits. For a potential user, it begs the
> > question: "Why should I care whether GNOME3 is "free", "accessible" or
> > "usable"? Millions of people use other desktops that are supposed to
> > be "less free", "less accessible" or "less usable" and yet these
> > millions of people do just fine. (And speaking freely, these can't
> > stand against the other important feature of a desktop: ubiquity.)

That is simply not true.  Because GNOME is free, the software is far
less expensive than other proprietary solutions.  Therefore, people
who might not be able to afford a proprietary solution could consider
using GNOME instead.

Using Microsoft Windows as an example.  It does not meet Section 508
Accessibility requirements out of the box as well as GNOME does.
Depending on the user's needs, many users need to pay additional money
to buy quality magnification, text-to-speech, and on-screen keyboard
software.  In addition, many common applications do not support MSAA,
so some users need to additionally purchase further applications to do 
common tasks.

This can quickly add up to thousands of dollars.  Some people with
disabilities are also financially disadvantaged (e.g. have trouble
finding work, or live in a 3rd world country where there are less
opportunities for the disadvantaged), so these proprietary solutions
simply are not viable.

For many users with accessibility needs, the solutions provided by
GNOME are sufficient and come bundled with the operating system at
no extra cost.  The ATK framework ensures that most GTK+ based programs
installed on the system are reasonably accessible, so there is no
need to purchase additional software.  If you were to touch base with
people on the gnome-accessibility-list, I am sure you could find many
people who would confirm that they find GNOME a usable and less
expensive solution than the alternatives.

Perhaps it would be good to spend some effort trying to recruit
npeople from places like the gnome-accessibility-list, and see if
we could get more marketing involvement from people who understand
these sorts of benefits in our marketing efforts.  It would
probably also be helpful to get people from other forums, such
as from the translation community, who can help articulate the
benefits of the fact that GNOME is translated in more 3rd world
languages than proprietary solutions.

If the GNOME community were better able to market these advantages,
then it seems likely that more people would be interested to try it
out.

This is just using accessibility as an example, since it is one I
am more familiar with.

> >  From an economist's point of view, these are "experience qualities":
> > One has to "buy" the product before one is able to confirm these
> > qualities. Of course, GNOME is not bought but we need people to invest
> > their time to install it somehow.

It is true that, from a marketing perspective, the GNOME community
could provide more case studies and testimonials to help people who
haven't tried GNOME to understand how well it works, and can meet
their needs.  However, it isn't necessary for someone to install
GNOME to learn about its features and instill a desire to try it out.

Brian