Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Alex:

> > 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.

It is not as if there is just one benefit to free software.  There are
many.

- It's less expensive
- There are humanitarian benefits (which even if it does not benefit a
  particular user, could make them feel good that they are supporting
  technology that helps others)
- It helps users not get locked into proprietary solutions that are
  expensive and otherwise damaging, etc.
- Free software tends to be based on UNIX, which has all sorts of
  security, performance, and other technology benefits compared to
  the market leader.
- And so on.

I'm not sure if any one benefit is enough to get people excited about
using free software.  It may be helpful to find a way to capture these
many benefits in a digestible form, rather than focus on a particular
one.

> 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.

True.  I think most people are happy to spend the extra money in
exchange for what seems to be a guaranteed trouble-free operating
system.  While people like freedom, I think that in many people's
eyes they prefer paying for a service.  Perhaps similar to the
attitude many people might have about preferring private health
care over free public health care.  Perhaps if there were stronger
or better organized services to help people overcome problems with
getting free software to meet their needs, it might help.

When people use Windows or MacOS, they never have to fret about whether
the operating system supports their wireless adapter or other hardware
device.  While this may not be true (I have had troubles getting
devices to work on Windows for sure), I think it is a common
perception.  Many users probably may not feel sophisticated enough to
figure out how to install an operating system by themselves, and may be
quickly turned off if they try and have a problem, or worried they
may "mess up" their computer.

This is a hard problem to solve, since the competition has the ability
to pre-install their operating systems on the computers most consumers
tend to buy.  So, most device issues are worked out by the hardware
vendors before people purchase the computers.  Users are not in the
habit of checking "do my devices work with a particular OS", they just
assume they should work.

Over the years, device support for free operating systems has improved
by leaps and bounds, but it isn't perfect; and perhaps will never be
up to the level that proprietary systems can achieve.  Perhaps, over
time, as more hardware vendors provide free-software based products,
this issue will diminish.

So, I think one of the challenges of marketing free software is helping
users to overcome these issues and concerns.  While, yes, free software
may be a bit of a pain in some ways, we need to communicate the value in
a way that is compelling enough to get people to take the plunge even if
there may be some pain.

Brian