Re: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets
Michael Scherer a écrit : Le jeudi 30 septembre 2010 à 22:05 +0800, Kira a écrit : A distribution for Newbie is good, but I think what Graham said is better. Well, saying a distribution for newbies is not as good as it sound. If you market the distribution so people think if you are a newbie, use this distro, people will think he use this distribution so he is a newbie. This will drive knowledgeable peoples away to others distribution, because they will feel they will learn more by using another distro ( which is wrong ) and because others peoples will appear as more knowledgeable when they use a distro that is not aimed at newbies. In turn, this mean a diminution of the global expertise in the community. Less expert users to answer to support, less experts users to report bug, fix packages, create softwares or contribute, and to basically teach to new users how to be good community member resulting in less quality, and a less sustainable community. Apple does it correctly. They never say we target newbie users. See http://www.apple.com//why-mac/ better computer most advanced os award winning support latest technology software you love. Everything resolve around how they are good, not how beginner you can be. Or see http://www.apple.com/why-mac/better-os/ they say it is easy, but they never say it is easy and can be used by a newbie. They say it is easy and you will learn how to use it fast, which is more positive. And so I think we should also try to avoid this pitfall, right from the start, if we want to have a thriving sustainable community. how about : Mageia : Linux that just works Mageia : Easy, Powerful, and Secure The danger is to identify Mageia too much with any particular market. Mandriva has attracted users and developpers by its ease of use. Mageia starts with this strength, which we should promote. That doesn't stop us from communicating the range of capabilities of Mageia, just that we should avoid too narrow a focus. - André (andre999)
Re: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets
Targeting the school boards makes a lot of sense. Note that Openoffice targeted various gov't organisations in France, some of which ended up migrating to Mandriva as well. Maybe that could work with school boards as well. I'm tempted to try something like that with mine, in banlieue of Montréal. Just out of curiosity, what is your school board ? For the server, if Mandriva management were a little more reasonable, it would be good to partner with them. (I'd like to see something like RedHat/Fedora.) In any case, you can't go wrong with RedHat. André (andre999) Bonjour André: As an example, the official word from the Ontario Ministry of Education is that if users cannot afford the use of MSOffice, that we are allowed to promote the use of StarOffice. Here is the official link: http://www.osapac.org/db/view_software.php?id=310 Sun had made arrangements to provide support through their 1-800 ... telephone service (unofficially, they had also said that they would have supported OpenOffice user queries as well, although this policy may have changed after this policy had been posted on the net). There are over 2 million students being taught in Ontario where I teach. Quite a good market to target. You can find the statistics on registered school student numbers here: http://www42.statcan.ca/smr08/2007/smr08_088_2007-eng.htm If we were to commit to an Education based install (this could be done at the point of installation where you could tag the type of distro that you would want installed) with SOLID alternatives for the most common software packages used in educational institutions, then we could make a convincing case for the installation of Mageia desktops in schools. Most governmental agencies today are sensitive to ways of cutting down on expenses. The only problem that I would see in doing such a promotion is that this type of usage would require a server/client solution. This is where the choice of server partnership would become important. RehHat and Suse are well-known servers options in the business world. We could then partner up with them and make sure that Mageia/RedHat or Mageia/Suse solutions are rock solid. Unless we seek a partnership with MandrivaLinux server, but in North American markets, Mandriva is really not a force to contend with and is not really known. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets
2010/10/3 andré and...@laposte.net: Targeting the school boards makes a lot of sense. Again this is something you can not generalize, different countries have different structures. In Germany it is not a school board who decides what software will be bought for a certain region or school. This is decided on state level for the various states of the federal republic. You have to go to some state office and compete with the reps of Microsoft. You do not talk to parents or teachers, it's some bureaucrats who decide this over here (with very few exceptions). Same with many other countries. This school board system as in the US is not a world wide system.
Re: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets
Le 2010-10-03 02:34, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit : 2010/10/3 andréand...@laposte.net: Targeting the school boards makes a lot of sense. Again this is something you can not generalize, different countries have different structures. In Germany it is not a school board who decides what software will be bought for a certain region or school. This is decided on state level for the various states of the federal republic. You have to go to some state office and compete with the reps of Microsoft. You do not talk to parents or teachers, it's some bureaucrats who decide this over here (with very few exceptions). Same with many other countries. This school board system as in the US is not a world wide system. I can't speak for André (he sounds like he is Canadian), but I am not a US citizen, I am Canadian. Our school system and software purchase models are the same as you describe. However, we do consult with school boards and interested partners before acquiring software licences. I am sure, the German states would consult with their partners before doing such as well. We have provinces in Canada and, as you say, in Germany you have states -- same hierarchy but with different names. As far as I know, the American model is more of a federalist model and consultation/coordination is done mostly from a national point of view. I am sure someone on the list will straighten us out on this account. We shouldn't assume that, if people describe a different system on this ML, that they are therefore American citizen who are trying to impose it on everyone. I just assume that we are all Canadians on the list (chuckles). Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
An old but interresting about interview for Mandriva's tools in perl: http://www.perl.com/pub/2005/02/24/mandrakelinux.html -- Dimitrios Glentadakis
Re: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets
On Sunday 03 Oct 2010 21:06:22 Marc Paré wrote: Le 2010-10-03 02:34, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit : 2010/10/3 andréand...@laposte.net: Targeting the school boards makes a lot of sense. Again this is something you can not generalize, different countries have different structures. In Germany it is not a school board who decides what software will be bought for a certain region or school. This is decided on state level for the various states of the federal republic. You have to go to some state office and compete with the reps of Microsoft. You do not talk to parents or teachers, it's some bureaucrats who decide this over here (with very few exceptions). Same with many other countries. This school board system as in the US is not a world wide system. I can't speak for André (he sounds like he is Canadian), but I am not a US citizen, I am Canadian. Our school system and software purchase models are the same as you describe. However, we do consult with school boards and interested partners before acquiring software licences. I am sure, the German states would consult with their partners before doing such as well. We have provinces in Canada and, as you say, in Germany you have states -- same hierarchy but with different names. As far as I know, the American model is more of a federalist model and consultation/coordination is done mostly from a national point of view. I am sure someone on the list will straighten us out on this account. We shouldn't assume that, if people describe a different system on this ML, that they are therefore American citizen who are trying to impose it on everyone. I just assume that we are all Canadians on the list (chuckles). I noticed that there seemed to be an overwhelming sense of reasonableness, Maybe you're right. ;) Marc GL -- Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant. INGOTs Assessor Trainer (International Grades in Open Technologies) www.theingots.org
Re: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets
2010/10/3 Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com: I can't speak for André (he sounds like he is Canadian), but I am not a US citizen, I am Canadian. Our school system and software purchase models are the same as you describe. However, we do consult with school boards and interested partners before acquiring software licences. I am sure, the German states would consult with their partners before doing such as well Unfortunately they do not. There have been lots of discussions but especially the hierarchy concerning education is very tight over here. All decisions are political decisions, not primarily based on technics or facts but on the political programs. SIngle schools or parents or students are not involved in such decisions. wobo
Re: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets
Le 2010-10-03 04:34, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit : 2010/10/3 Marc Parém...@marcpare.com: I can't speak for André (he sounds like he is Canadian), but I am not a US citizen, I am Canadian. Our school system and software purchase models are the same as you describe. However, we do consult with school boards and interested partners before acquiring software licences. I am sure, the German states would consult with their partners before doing such as well Unfortunately they do not. There have been lots of discussions but especially the hierarchy concerning education is very tight over here. All decisions are political decisions, not primarily based on technics or facts but on the political programs. SIngle schools or parents or students are not involved in such decisions. wobo It is strange that parents, teachers and even students would not have a say. How can there be an acquisition and amortization period for your software programmes if you do not consult with your partners? I do not know of any system where it would survive without input from groups using the software/hardware. Otherwise, people would simply not use the software that was dictated to them and the politicians would then have to try to rationalize the reasons why they spent the $ for software that nobody uses. There must be a consultative process otherwise your educational system would have complained for sure. In Canada, and in my province of Ontario, we are even mandated to get input from our students. We all have a say. That is not to say that there is no political involvement, but even so, voices of all ages are heard and reported back to the people in charge of planning and purchases. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets
Quote: marc wrote on Sun, 03 October 2010 10:57 There must be a consultative process otherwise your educational system would have complained for sure. Germans are used to not question authorities, so this is not strange. Different country, different mentality, that's why talking abut global PR/marketing strategies makes little sense. So many global corporations had to learn this the hard way.
Re: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets
2010/10/3 Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com: It is strange that parents, teachers and even students would not have a say. How can there be an acquisition and amortization period for your software programmes if you do not consult with your partners? Schools and parents and students are not partners for the politicians. The problem is, high level MS reps (even Mr. Gates did) visit the MP (like the governor of a US state) and talks with him. Then the contracts are signed and the whole hierarchy downwards has to act according to those contracts. Schools and students and parents are at the bottom of that hierarchy. Who said we do have an education problem? the politicians would then have to try to rationalize the reasons why they spent the $ for software that nobody uses. There must be a consultative process otherwise your educational system would have complained for sure. They do complain, so what? The politicians have their opinions and they act upon that. If the people's annoyance level is high enough the people will show it at next elections. But whoever they vote for, they are jsut the same. Sorry, I did not want to get into politics, it's just that over here all education is ruled by the verious states of our federal republic. wobo
[Mageia-dev] News about the forum
Hi all, After many opinions and suggestions exchanges, mails and thought we have started to work on forum thing. Considering our hope to grow we started to analyse the board engines with a few axis of needs : Work input data : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software_%28PHP%29 http://www.big-boards.com/ http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/bbPress+FluxBB+FUDforum+Invision-Power-Board+MyBB+Phorum+phpBB+punBB+SMF+vBulletin (In this last link boards versions are not perfectly up-to date :-( ) (and secunia resports about security alerts these last years) Axes : 1) Ability to hold under heavy loads and store many posts = phpBB3, vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, MesDiscussions.net which are the most represented on big boards 2) Moderation features = vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, phpBB3, Simple Machines Forum 2, MyBB 3) User Features = vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, phpBB3, Simple Machines Forum 2, MyBB, FudForum 4) Security = phpBB3, FudForum, vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2... (phpBB2 was not even considered as an option from the beginning) (MyBB was not very good) 5) Look and ergonomy = vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, phpBB3, Simple Machines Forum 2, MyBB... 5) Opensource (GPL or AGPL) = phpBB3, FudForum, MyBB (GPLv3 \o/), punBB, phorum... Method and results : We excluded proprietary software (wether free or not)... (Of course when it comes to usability and features vBulletin and Invision Power Board are far ahead... the goal was to find something hopefully able to compete with them) : So exit: vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, Simple Machines Forum 2, MesDiscussions.net... Then we excluded forums with utf8 know issues like punBB... Then we excluded forums with too well known security issues discovered theses last years : So exit: MyBB (Sad for french people but that's life) and phorum... http://secunia.com/advisories/product/4144/?task=statistics http://secunia.com/advisories/product/4479/?task=statistics for Fudforum there were not much issues but one of them allowed system access... we saved it because of people enthusiasm on the lists :) Then we Excluded forums with bad organization of administration/moderation control panels and/or missing moderation features: So exit: fudforum (which also would have been painful to relook) and FluxBB also. Nota: Fud has got the very cool mailing list bridge that we should set up rather as soon as possible on the official board (but as already said this feature still needs to be thought about, discussed by people and heavily tested to avoid backfires... considering the current mailing lists trafic and the obvious lack of love of some packagers for forums this is not something to underestimate) = The survivor is phpBB3 which is n°1 in big-boards.com and yet is far from perfect imho. It will need some tweaking (that others would have needed also : mainly about troll management, and also support enhancements for example to mark support topics as [solved]) to match more closely our needs... So we started to work on phpBB3 with ash (thanks to ennael personal funding)... One cool thing is that phpBB3 is published also through git so we are able to track upstream changes and merge them quickly into our running version without breaking local patches and enhancements. (The upgrade via this method has been successfully tested a few hours ago) At this precise minute we have a fresh new (skinned) up-to-date phpBB3 running that still needs a few adds (language packs for example). Hope we'll be soon able to push DNS records so that everybody can get in and give us feedback and improvement proposals. Stay tuned, Maât (a little bit tired... sorry my english is probably uglier than usual)
Re: [Mageia-dev] News about the forum
2010/10/4 Maât maat...@vilarem.net: Hi all, After many opinions and suggestions exchanges, mails and thought we have started to work on forum thing. Considering our hope to grow we started to analyse the board engines with a few axis of needs : Work input data : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software_%28PHP%29 http://www.big-boards.com/ http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/bbPress+FluxBB+FUDforum+Invision-Power-Board+MyBB+Phorum+phpBB+punBB+SMF+vBulletin (In this last link boards versions are not perfectly up-to date :-( ) (and secunia resports about security alerts these last years) Axes : 1) Ability to hold under heavy loads and store many posts = phpBB3, vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, MesDiscussions.net which are the most represented on big boards 2) Moderation features = vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, phpBB3, Simple Machines Forum 2, MyBB 3) User Features = vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, phpBB3, Simple Machines Forum 2, MyBB, FudForum 4) Security = phpBB3, FudForum, vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2... (phpBB2 was not even considered as an option from the beginning) (MyBB was not very good) 5) Look and ergonomy = vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, phpBB3, Simple Machines Forum 2, MyBB... 5) Opensource (GPL or AGPL) = phpBB3, FudForum, MyBB (GPLv3 \o/), punBB, phorum... Method and results : We excluded proprietary software (wether free or not)... (Of course when it comes to usability and features vBulletin and Invision Power Board are far ahead... the goal was to find something hopefully able to compete with them) : So exit: vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, Simple Machines Forum 2, MesDiscussions.net... Then we excluded forums with utf8 know issues like punBB... Then we excluded forums with too well known security issues discovered theses last years : So exit: MyBB (Sad for french people but that's life) and phorum... http://secunia.com/advisories/product/4144/?task=statistics http://secunia.com/advisories/product/4479/?task=statistics for Fudforum there were not much issues but one of them allowed system access... we saved it because of people enthusiasm on the lists :) Then we Excluded forums with bad organization of administration/moderation control panels and/or missing moderation features: So exit: fudforum (which also would have been painful to relook) and FluxBB also. Nota: Fud has got the very cool mailing list bridge that we should set up rather as soon as possible on the official board (but as already said this feature still needs to be thought about, discussed by people and heavily tested to avoid backfires... considering the current mailing lists trafic and the obvious lack of love of some packagers for forums this is not something to underestimate) = The survivor is phpBB3 which is n°1 in big-boards.com and yet is far from perfect imho. It will need some tweaking (that others would have needed also : mainly about troll management, and also support enhancements for example to mark support topics as [solved]) to match more closely our needs... So we started to work on phpBB3 with ash (thanks to ennael personal funding)... One cool thing is that phpBB3 is published also through git so we are able to track upstream changes and merge them quickly into our running version without breaking local patches and enhancements. (The upgrade via this method has been successfully tested a few hours ago) At this precise minute we have a fresh new (skinned) up-to-date phpBB3 running that still needs a few adds (language packs for example). Hope we'll be soon able to push DNS records so that everybody can get in and give us feedback and improvement proposals. Stay tuned, Maât (a little bit tired... sorry my english is probably uglier than usual) Nice, thanks for the good job :) !
