Although I do not agree that RedHat and ms are in many way the same.
There are important things, for Debian, or any distribution, to learn
from the comparison. The simple fact is that there is a direct
correlation between name recognition and market share.
Achieving substantial increased market share, especially outside
the techie world, requires marketing the distribution. This is usually
means advertising. Adverting costs money. Regular advertising requires
a fairly high, predictable and regular income stream. For a
noncommercial distribution like debian this means increasing donations.
One way to do this is to develop new applications in house that
have the debian name. And to specifically ask for donations to Debian
from users of the application regardless of the distribution it runs
on. Still keep it open and give it away, but include some notice like
the following; " Debian Good-bye World was developed by the Debian
Project
.... If you are able to make a contribution please do so" or some such
thing. Or even more simply to just ask for donations on regular basis
There are also free ways to increase name recognition and market share
of Debian. It may be a mistake to rely so heavily on internet support
for the distribution. More localized user groups might make it easier
for new users, and would increase Debian's presense in the local
community. This obviously increases name recognition.
Microsoft is a success because, rightly or wrongly, users associate
that name brand with personal computers. If Red hat achieves dominance
on the Linux platform. It will be for the same reason. Debian could
remain/ become a smaller techie oriented distribution. That's fine with
me. But, if Debian wants to to be a thriving distribution for the end
user and business markets we should not waste time whining about it. We
should accept these facts and act accordingly. Because this is the way
things are in the real world
