On 10/29/2012 10:16 PM, Donald Whytock wrote:
About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract, but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? Typically marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be?
I think this is not abstract for those who have been part of the former OOo community.
In a typical Apache project you have developers, testers, people working on documentation. They join for different reason, some are delegated by their employers, some are freelancers who want to sharpen their profile as an expert for that project (among many other possible reasons) and some are volunteers who join for fun. With an end-user projects the same reasons apply for the marketing people. At OOo we had contributors who wrote a detailed business plan, just for fun. I, for instance, coordinated the efforts for OOo booth at the CeBIT in 2011 as volunteer, just because I enjoyed doing it.
How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users -> more traffic -> more demand for resources -> more demand for people that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering of AOO?
I cannot speak for Apache, but as the ASF had accepted Oracle's grant, they now have the responsibility to deal with it.
How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative clout for acquiring resources from Apache?
Did no one consider that?
I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business practices and commercialization of software available, it's important for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish, other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea.
Many (unpaid) volunteers are working on such a viral idea successfully at LO and they are rewarded with a fair amount of donations from people who honor the efforts. But, doesn't a similar idea apply for Apache's HTTP server? Why does Apache produce it, isn't it simply production for production's sake?
If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than "Don't you think this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do."
That's why it should be discussed in that BoF session we're talking about.
