Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

Alex Hudson wrote:
> Brian Cameron wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> While I agree with the sentiment, the situation is that for most people
> Windows is gratis.

Yes, but it's not Free.

I agree, freedom is a hard concept to sell. Do we want to compare Linux
to the American civil rights movement in the 60s? Solidarity in Poland
in the 80s? The fight against Apartheid in South Africa? Perhaps 1984 or
Brave New World, the police state in the US and UK?

We *could* use those images & ideas, but the comparison would be
considered silly, unless we also manage to draw the prison bars in
people's minds. This is one of the reasons why video surveillance,
national ID cards, biometrics and surveillance of phone conversations
are politically fairly easy to implement - because "only the guilty need
to worry about that".

The insidious nature of the "digital prison" which is being built around
technology users is what we need to educate about, and Free Software is
in many ways one of the cures to that ill.

How about this as an idea (parodying "First they came...":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...)

"    They came first for the hackers, And I didn’t speak up because I
wasn’t a hacker;

    And then they came for the trademark infringers, And I didn’t speak
up because I wasn’t a trademark infringer;

    And then they came for the software pirates, And I didn’t speak up
because I wasn’t a software pirate;

    And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no
one left to speak up"

(the examples are more relevant to rabble rousing free software
developers than to explaining how people are ceding their rights - more
appropriate would be images that show that you don't own your data, or
your applications, can't lend people books, and that you don't have much
of a right to anything on your computer. "Ferme ta gueule et fait ce que
je te dis" ("Shut up & do what you're told").

You could overlay this as a soundtrack on top of various images of
"fringe elements" being oppressed, followed by some kind of hopeful
image of free software representing freedom, an opportunity to escape
the shackles of dependence on the goodwill of large corporate entities.

We *must* find a way to frame the debate in terms of freedom, choice,
community. Those *are* our selling points. As Claus said, to the end
user, there is very little technical merit to choosing Linux over
Windows. So we have to frame the debate differently.

> However, that said, I don't think GNOME is marketable as mainstream
> software - mainly because, it's not Windows. I don't think marketing
> GNOME as a Windows competitor per se is a winning strategy either :)

You're allowing the game to be defined by the past, not the future.

Windows is a general purpose desktop operating system.

Competing against Windows as a general purpose operating system is a
losing proposition.

However, competing against Windows as a light, adaptible operating
system, with variants suitable for smaller form factors, could work.
Linux is already a strong presence in this new market.

Competing against Windows Mobile as an operating system suitable for PDA
& phone could work. iPhone & Android are already doing this very
successfully.

Competing against Windows in any number of single-use, vertical
application systems seems to me like a no-brainer: Point of sale
systems, GPSes, internet access points, digital TV, ...

These are all mainstream graphical software. And all markets where
Windows isn't well positioned. A major strength of free software in
general is that one size doesn't fit all, and we're vastly more
adaptible than Windows. We should be building examples of this
adaptibility to go along with the general purpose desktop OS image.

Our barriers to entry? For some of these vertical apps, it's hardware.
For others, it's proprietary protocols. For others, it's availability of
applications. Often, it's developer knowledge (developers working for
companies building this type of application pick the OS they know, and
for graphical development, that's Windows). For some applications, it's
memory usage or speed, architecture issues, or slow development time of
the specific interfaces needed - every mobile phone vendor is rebuilding
a complete UI on top of the GNOME development platform, a massive
duplicated wasted effort.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org