At 22:14 03/04/2001 -0400, John Dobbins wrote:
>"Simon P. Lucy" wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Does mozilla.org suffer because there is no equivalent to a Marketing
> > head? Very possibly.
> >
>
>Possibly?
>
>Let me put it this way. Say I own an ISP. Who is going to convince me to adopt
>Mozilla? Why should I create a branded version that will be on every cd I
>send to
>a customer?
Others have given different kind of Netscape skewed answers to this. Its
true that its likely to be Netscape/AOL who will convince ISPs to brand
their particular build and so the marketing push to do that really won't
concentrate on any Mozilla brand but on the Netscape inheritance and in
that the standards compliance is a poor run third in the list of features
that would convince any branding ISP.
The plasticity of Mozilla again isn't a feature in favour of it being
branded by any ISP, branding is a whole different kettle of fish from
building their own distribution. Netscape always did have a branding
process, that Mozilla makes that easier now is a minor win since it also
makes it harder for that branding to stick given the way that users can
change their own themes.
>What's in it for me?
>Not only do I not give a damn about standards, I would prefer that it NOT
>adhere
>too closely to the W3C. Why? Because every time a page doesn't look right
>I might
>get a support call that costs me money. I don't care if it's the browsers
>fault
>or the page authors fault. The only thing that matters to me is that my
>customers
>don't call the help desk, and if MSIE results in fewer calls then for my
>purposes
>it's the better browser.
Not adhering to W3C doesn't per se give you an easier browser to support it
just gives a different slice of problems that you're more familiar
with. Tuning quirks mode and at the same time accepting valid standard
syntax will in the short term actually reduce a lot of that support
requirement.
There are two areas where the support requirement is currently intolerable,
plugins and browser identification. Plugins because the current situation
sucks, users either have to have the ingenuity of squirrels or they do
without a particular plugin. Browser identification is a documentation and
evangelist problem. At the moment the small changes needed to ensure that
Netscape/Mozilla browsers aren't incorrectly identified as 4.x aren't well
known or well understood. There's also a degree of head in the sand about
realising exactly how much effort is needed to change entire sites that
have been locked into Navigator versions.
>It costs me money to train the people at my Help desk. That themes thing
>makes it
>harder for me to train them. I can't just give them a script that says "If
>foo is
>happening tell customer to hit the circle with the x in it". I have extra
>training costs, yet the number of available themes is disappointing
>because they
>are too hard for the average person to write. Themes may have potential as a
>marketing tool but for now all they do is cost me money.
Themes are an over emphasised feature, its a problem for any group that
needs a consistent interface to support, whether that's ISPs or IT/IS
departments and why I raised a bug on disallowing theme changes a long time
ago. http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38908 This is more likely
as preferences are changing to allow them to be frozen.
>If I stick with MSIE MS will assist me in marketing, and if nothing else
>they are
>very good at marketing. Who is there at Mozilla to help me with marketing?
>Nobody. What marketing tools do you have that will help me? Graphics that
>some of
>my customers will call and raise hell about? Yep, that's just the kind of
>help I
>looking for. No thank you!
Well that's what Netscape and distributors like them will do. If anyone is
under the misapprehension that mozilla.org is about to provide marketing
support then they need to disabuse themselves of it. That wasn't my point
about mozilla.org lacking a Marketing department, if mozilla.org needs a
Marketing department then it needs one to say what it is and what it is not
more clearly.
I don't understand the point about graphics that customers will raise hell
about.
>These are the kind of arguments that will take place in potential clients.
>Since
>Mozilla doesn't have a Marketing Department it will lack the kind of features
>that would convince an ISP that that they can make money off supporting the
>product, and there won't be anyone to make a pitch for the features that
>it does
>have.
I don't expect a regular ISP to brand Mozilla, still less to make their own
distribution its too much investment for no real return. I do expect
platform providers, palm tops, internet devices of one kind or another,
vertical markets such as distance learning and so on, to want tailored
builds and distributions.
>If you want Mozilla to be more than a three year long exercise in masturbation
>for a bunch of developers, then it's time to start thinking about
>marketing the
>lizard.
Having spent more than 18 months trying to build derivative products in
parallel I can attest that masturbation is the least of the problems, there
seems to be a shortage of kleenex as well.
>Why should John's ISP develop a branded lizard?
No good reason right now, nor in the future.
Simon
>John,
==================================
We are not the stuff that abides,
but patterns that perpetuate themselves.
Norbert Weiner
