Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams

[Alex Hudson <home alexhudson com>]

Hey Dave,

Dave Neary wrote:
> Alex Hudson wrote:
>   
> > 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?
>   

To be honest, even if there was a way to promote that image without the 
'silly' as you later discussed, I'm not sure it's really that effective 
a message anyway.

If someone uses a piece of free software instead of proprietary, what's 
the main immediate benefit to them? Really, there isn't one - the value 
of software freedom is a bit further down the road ("you won't be forced 
to do <x> in the future" or that kind of thing) and what we're 
effectively trying to promote is something more akin to a promise or an 
insurance policy.

Trying to market something on "jam tomorrow" is hard. I think it would 
be especially hard when, for the most people, the non-free aspects of 
proprietary software generally don't bother them. People don't feel 
digitally oppressed, and no marketing campaign that we could launch is 
going to bring them to any point of recognition imho. If you ask a 
selection of people what problems they have with their computer, I would 
be amazed if any issues that were more than tangentially related to 
freedom came up.

> 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.
>   

Well, I agree and disagree with that. I agree that a marketing message 
has to be framed on the strengths, and I think you're correctly 
identifying those. But I also think it has to be framed in a way that 
users will recognise the value easily without having to be "educated" in 
some way.

Let me give you an example. Software distribution in the free software 
world works somewhat differently to the proprietary world, as we know. 
You click on PackageKit or whatever, and you can go find apps, download 
it and install it.

Ok, it's enabled by freedom, but it's a technical feature which delivers 
immediate and obvious value to the end user. And I'm extremely confident 
that it's a message which would work well because I see the exact same 
message on my TV; except it's Apple spending millions showcasing their 
iPhone app store and how wonderful it is.

And actually, if we think about this, it's an area we should be strong 
in but we're still being whipped by the proprietary boys. Apple have 
this whole third-party apps ecosystem. Google/Android have the same 
thing in development, WME has it, etc. etc. GNOME is really sorely 
lacking in that area, we don't have anything like the same kind of 
independent software authors contributing little apps.

> > 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.
>   

Well, that was really what I was getting at. These variants aren't 
really competing with Windows; they're competing with the specific apps 
running on those devices, particularly the embedded stuff.

In fact, they make up a market that's pretty classic in terms of market 
share versus mind share. Loads of people have TomTom. Only a minority 
know they're running Linux. It could be Windows under there; they don't 
care. Same can probably be said of phones, netbooks, digital TV, etc.

For me, marketing has to be about mind share, not market share.

Cheers,

Alex.