Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
> The same principle should hold for GNOME. If we are actually better than > our competitors, than all we have to do is make sure that the distros > realize this (by marketing ourselves *to the distros*), and we win. And if > we *aren't* better than our competitors, then we're working against users' > interests if we try to convince them otherwise. Agree - just want to butt in to say "developers" are customers of GNOME too, and we should treat them equally as importantly as we have the distros. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2006: Dunedin, New Zealand http://linux.conf.au/ "It is said that there are only six jokes in the world, and I can assure you that we can only broadcast three of them..." - John Watt, the BBC's Head of Variety in the 30's -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 16:28 -0500, Dan Winship wrote: > Sri Ramkrishna wrote: > > I met the guy who did firefox's community (and release manager I > > believe)stuff (and I think marketing) at OSCON. He said he would be > > happy to talk with us about what he did to help Firefox. > > Gnome is not like Firefox. End users can see an ad for Firefox, decide > that it's cool, download it, install it, and go. But end users can't > download and install "Gnome". The closest they can come is to download > and install a Linux distribution that is *based on* Gnome, which (even > ignoring the huge difference in scale between a web browser and a > distro) is a totally different thing. How would we tell users to install > GNOME if we had a New York Times ad? Would we pick a preferred distro? > Or let anyone who wanted to contribute money to the ad be able to put in > a plug for their distro (even if that distro was really hard to install > and was likely to end up driving users away)? I think the liveCD fills quite a gap here. > > We can't sell ourselves directly to end users. We need to sell ourselves > to Linux distros, and get them to sell *themselves* to end users. We're > not like Firefox, we're like Intel! [Cue "Intel Inside" chimes] The vast > majority of our "customers" don't "buy" our product directly, they're > getting it as an integral part of someone else's product. Even if they > do understand that this other product contains our product, they aren't > going to be able to explain exactly what our part does for the combined > product, where our part of the product ends and the other vendor's part > begins, or how the possible alternatives to our product would make > things different for them. At best, they'll be able to say "well, this > one has 2.8 and that other one has 2.6, so I'll get this one because it > has a bigger number!" > > Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean we want to market ourselves the > same way Intel does. Intel definitely markets itself to end users, but > that's just part of its strategy to sell chips to PC manufacturers, who > are its real customers. By convincing end users that PCs with Intel > chips are better/faster/more-likely-to-get-them-laid than PCs with AMD > chips, they keep the demand for Intel-based PCs high, which keeps the > manufacturers buying lots of chips, which keeps Intel in business. > > We could apply the same technique: convince end users that GNOME is > better for them, so that they will preferentially install distros that > use GNOME, so that distros (our real customers) will use GNOME as their > preferred desktop. But there's a problem. (Sri, you might want to stop > reading here :-). Intel only markets itself to end users because its > products *aren't* any better than its competitors'. If their chips were > unambiguously better than AMDs, then the PC manufacturers wouldn't need > to be convinced to stay with Intel, it would just be the obvious choice. I think that your looking at two extremes here by only looking at distros and the end user. A very important factor are the small linux support companies that install/migrate/admin linux servers/desktops for small to middle companies. IMHO distros other then perhaps linspire or Xandros don't actually want to make a choice between KDE/GNOME they will simply give that choice to the users and tell the users that that choice is a good thing(tm) However the small linux company's can't do that kind of thing, they are getting payed money to make that choice for other people/companies. convincing those people that GNOME is the obvious beter/more functional choice would be a far greater win i think. but this all very very IMHO, since i first really need to pick up a book on marketing and give myself a crash course, because i'm thinking too much of selling and as said before somewhere on the list that's not what marketing is. -- Erik Snoeijs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
Hi, I agree with many things you wrote in your post; I really do! This is why I have to nitpick a little bit: ;-) 1.) Intel markets itself to end users to be able to receive a premium for its products and/or sell more. 2.) Quality is seldomly a one-dimensional measure for buyers. To use words as 'obvious choice' and 'unambiguously better' is in most cases wrong. I believe your conclusions are thus not quite right: There's quite a lot we need to convince end users of. Cheers, Claus On Thu, 08 Dec 2005 16:28:05 -0500 Dan Winship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sri Ramkrishna wrote: > > I met the guy who did firefox's community (and release manager I > > believe)stuff (and I think marketing) at OSCON. He said he would be > > happy to talk with us about what he did to help Firefox. > > Gnome is not like Firefox. End users can see an ad for Firefox, decide > that it's cool, download it, install it, and go. But end users can't > download and install "Gnome". The closest they can come is to download > and install a Linux distribution that is *based on* Gnome, which (even > ignoring the huge difference in scale between a web browser and a > distro) is a totally different thing. How would we tell users to install > GNOME if we had a New York Times ad? Would we pick a preferred distro? > Or let anyone who wanted to contribute money to the ad be able to put in > a plug for their distro (even if that distro was really hard to install > and was likely to end up driving users away)? > > We can't sell ourselves directly to end users. We need to sell ourselves > to Linux distros, and get them to sell *themselves* to end users. We're > not like Firefox, we're like Intel! [Cue "Intel Inside" chimes] The vast > majority of our "customers" don't "buy" our product directly, they're > getting it as an integral part of someone else's product. Even if they > do understand that this other product contains our product, they aren't > going to be able to explain exactly what our part does for the combined > product, where our part of the product ends and the other vendor's part > begins, or how the possible alternatives to our product would make > things different for them. At best, they'll be able to say "well, this > one has 2.8 and that other one has 2.6, so I'll get this one because it > has a bigger number!" > > Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean we want to market ourselves the > same way Intel does. Intel definitely markets itself to end users, but > that's just part of its strategy to sell chips to PC manufacturers, who > are its real customers. By convincing end users that PCs with Intel > chips are better/faster/more-likely-to-get-them-laid than PCs with AMD > chips, they keep the demand for Intel-based PCs high, which keeps the > manufacturers buying lots of chips, which keeps Intel in business. > > We could apply the same technique: convince end users that GNOME is > better for them, so that they will preferentially install distros that > use GNOME, so that distros (our real customers) will use GNOME as their > preferred desktop. But there's a problem. (Sri, you might want to stop > reading here :-). Intel only markets itself to end users because its > products *aren't* any better than its competitors'. If their chips were > unambiguously better than AMDs, then the PC manufacturers wouldn't need > to be convinced to stay with Intel, it would just be the obvious choice. > > The same principle should hold for GNOME. If we are actually better than > our competitors, than all we have to do is make sure that the distros > realize this (by marketing ourselves *to the distros*), and we win. And > if we *aren't* better than our competitors, then we're working against > users' interests if we try to convince them otherwise. > > (And what are we going to convince end users of anyway? "Use GNOME! It > has Epiphany! [Unless you're using Red Hat, SUSE, or Ubuntu. Or anything > else.] It doesn't have an office suite!" GNOME isn't a whole story unto > itself. "Desktop Linux" is the story, but that's not a story we can tell > on our own.) > > -- Dan > -- > marketing-list mailing list > marketing-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list > -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
How interested in promoting GTK apps? [was Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?]
Precisely today I was thinking about Epiphany and the GNOME Office suite. GTK is something specific to GNOME, and GTK can be the horse of Troja of GNOME in the MS Windows world as (Dave?) pointed recently: you can just download and try. But then we have OpenOffice.org and the Mozilla family as two of the most known and successful free software projects, and they also can be downloaded and tried in MS Windows. They are not part of the GNOME project, yet they are GNOME-friendly. En/na Dan Winship ha escrit: > (And what are we going to convince end users of anyway? "Use GNOME! It > has Epiphany! [Unless you're using Red Hat, SUSE, or Ubuntu. Or anything > else.] It doesn't have an office suite!" My questions are: - How interested is the GNOME project promoting Epiphany and the GNOME Office tools over Firefox and OpenOffice.org (we could add here Evolution vs Thunderbird). - I think I have read from Murray, Dom and others that tools like Epiphany and Abiword are somehow better, but... what are the arguments to afirm this and do we want to promote them? - In general, how strong and valid is the whole GTK thing to be marketed as something distinctive, genuine and worth to test and enjoy? I am no programmer so I have no idea about 'the quality of the product', altough I kind of smell possibilities for being one original piece in our marketing puzzle. -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
Sri Ramkrishna wrote: I met the guy who did firefox's community (and release manager I believe)stuff (and I think marketing) at OSCON. He said he would be happy to talk with us about what he did to help Firefox. Gnome is not like Firefox. End users can see an ad for Firefox, decide that it's cool, download it, install it, and go. But end users can't download and install "Gnome". The closest they can come is to download and install a Linux distribution that is *based on* Gnome, which (even ignoring the huge difference in scale between a web browser and a distro) is a totally different thing. How would we tell users to install GNOME if we had a New York Times ad? Would we pick a preferred distro? Or let anyone who wanted to contribute money to the ad be able to put in a plug for their distro (even if that distro was really hard to install and was likely to end up driving users away)? We can't sell ourselves directly to end users. We need to sell ourselves to Linux distros, and get them to sell *themselves* to end users. We're not like Firefox, we're like Intel! [Cue "Intel Inside" chimes] The vast majority of our "customers" don't "buy" our product directly, they're getting it as an integral part of someone else's product. Even if they do understand that this other product contains our product, they aren't going to be able to explain exactly what our part does for the combined product, where our part of the product ends and the other vendor's part begins, or how the possible alternatives to our product would make things different for them. At best, they'll be able to say "well, this one has 2.8 and that other one has 2.6, so I'll get this one because it has a bigger number!" Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean we want to market ourselves the same way Intel does. Intel definitely markets itself to end users, but that's just part of its strategy to sell chips to PC manufacturers, who are its real customers. By convincing end users that PCs with Intel chips are better/faster/more-likely-to-get-them-laid than PCs with AMD chips, they keep the demand for Intel-based PCs high, which keeps the manufacturers buying lots of chips, which keeps Intel in business. We could apply the same technique: convince end users that GNOME is better for them, so that they will preferentially install distros that use GNOME, so that distros (our real customers) will use GNOME as their preferred desktop. But there's a problem. (Sri, you might want to stop reading here :-). Intel only markets itself to end users because its products *aren't* any better than its competitors'. If their chips were unambiguously better than AMDs, then the PC manufacturers wouldn't need to be convinced to stay with Intel, it would just be the obvious choice. The same principle should hold for GNOME. If we are actually better than our competitors, than all we have to do is make sure that the distros realize this (by marketing ourselves *to the distros*), and we win. And if we *aren't* better than our competitors, then we're working against users' interests if we try to convince them otherwise. (And what are we going to convince end users of anyway? "Use GNOME! It has Epiphany! [Unless you're using Red Hat, SUSE, or Ubuntu. Or anything else.] It doesn't have an office suite!" GNOME isn't a whole story unto itself. "Desktop Linux" is the story, but that's not a story we can tell on our own.) -- Dan -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Indian bank move to RHEL
Dave Neary wrote: > An Indian bank will move to RHEL on 1,000 servers and 10,000 > workstations. Not sure if they'll be using GNOME, given that they're > migrating from DOS and Netware, perhaps they're going to be using a > console app? ;) No GNOME this time but proposed for a later and larger desktop migration. Rgds SM -- You see things; and you say 'Why?'; But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Indian bank move to RHEL
Hi, http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/story/0,10801,105513,00.html?from=story_kc An Indian bank will move to RHEL on 1,000 servers and 10,000 workstations. Not sure if they'll be using GNOME, given that they're migrating from DOS and Netware, perhaps they're going to be using a console app? ;) Cheers, Dave. -- David Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
