Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams

[Alex Hudson <home alexhudson com>]

Brian Cameron wrote:
> > While I agree with the sentiment, the situation is that for most people
> > Windows is gratis.
> Yes, it is a challenging situation.
I would put it in stronger terms than that :D

> With the economy in the situation its in, perhaps people might be more
> interested in saving money.  At any rate, the fact that free software
> solutions cost less is a point worth highlighting, even if it might
> not be the most significant motivator.
Just to be clear; I absolutely agree with that. I'm not saying it's not 
worth making that kind of statement, or that it's worth telling people 
about the accessibility - in fact, I think those are hugely important 
messages. I just don't think it's going to get close to swaying most 
people, because from my experience they really don't give a hoot about it.
> > 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 :)
> Then perhaps you are on the wrong mailing list?  Obviously one major
> goal of this forum is to figure out how to overcome these issues.  I
> don't think throwing up our hands and saying "it can't be done" is
> helpful.  Or do you have any suggestions on what you think would make
> for a more successful marketing strategy?
That's a great point, and clearly it's possible to overcome these issues 
in some way: Macintosh is, to me, an excellent example of an enthused 
user base which generates sufficient revenue from its customers that the 
people developing it can go forwards leaps and bounds.
In the general case, I don't think free software is in that situation. 
Firefox, as a stand-out example, is funded essentially by advertising - 
and honestly, if Google disappeared for them tomorrow, I think they 
would be in serious trouble.
I think my main concern is that trying to out-Windows Windows is 
basically a losing argument: they have a monopoly on the market, and 
it's locked in effectively by network effects. No matter how much better 
GNOME is virtually all aspects, it will have severe trouble competing on 
that ground.
My approach would be to gain a beachhead in a specific but widely-used 
niche that GNOME can be specifically, but not exclusively, marketed 
into. Our huge, huge advantage over Windows - again, imho :) - is that 
GNOME isn't as competitive with third parties / ISVs / others as MS is, 
and doesn't have the same conflict of interests. That means that GNOME 
will integrate where Windows won't dare, and look out for the user as 
#1. Personally, that's how I would look to market it: you have the 
various DRM examples, even iTunes etc., where software is designed to do 
things that are not in the interest of the user - which comes down to 
the entire raison d'etre of free software. Going there is a place that 
other software (apart from Kde ;) cannot follow, so that would be my 
approach.
But, I'm not like fixed on these ideas - you may well be right. I see 
things from a specific UK-small-busines bias, which is admittedly only a 
small section of life. I'm also not a GNOME developer really, but I do 
develop software that I want GNOME to integrate into and rock hard with, 
so that is also partially my bias. At the end of the day, it's vastly 
more important to a. agree on a message and b. hammer it home. I'm 
onboard with that, so insofar as the right mailing list is concerned, I 
think I'm on it :) Just chucking in my 2c!
Cheers,

Alex.