On 22/09/2011 13:01, alan c wrote:
On 22/09/11 12:50, Simon Greenwood wrote:
On 22 September 2011 11:53, alan c<aecl...@candt.waitrose.com> wrote:
On 22/09/11 11:14, Simon Greenwood wrote:
On 22 September 2011 10:50, alan c<aecl...@candt.waitrose.com> wrote:
On 22/09/11 09:47, Paul Sutton wrote:
We would have to do a lot of awareness raising and support things like
install days to get round things like this. as the borg say "we will
adapt"
The FLOSS world's lack of competence, or even appetite, for publicity
or marketing is the elephant in the room.
1) FLOSS, GNU/Linux etc, 'marketing' is pretty well non existent
compared to non free products. 'I advertise, therefore I exist'
(apologies to Descartes).
2) Of all things, marketing is -very- unsuited to the free libre,
distributed model.
Marketing, maybe, promotion not. I would argue that that is pretty much
why
Ubuntu exists, to create a user-friendly Linux and to encourage its use.
Community was the single most important reason why I personally
started to use Ubuntu.
This is almost a word of mouth thing. Person direct to person. I am
not saying we cannot do anything at all, just that evidence suggests
that we are not going to win with ONLY existing strategies.
Promotion: how is marketing different from promotion? Do microsoft
have a marketing department and a promotion department?
Our lack of experience in these matters is painful.
--
That's a good philosophical question. Microsoft has marketing and Linux has
advocacy. I wouldn't say there's a lack of experience, just not a single
monolithic business that pushed Linux on the desktop, which where Windows is
concerned, has been Microsoft's policy for a good 20 years.
There's no shortage of companies marketing the benefits of Linux on the
server side: HP, Oracle and IBM to name the biggest, but the argument is
always the cost benefit of migration.
The biggest barrier to get over on the desktop is that Windows is just
there, that people think of IE as 'The Internet' and that Word is the only
way to do word processing. People still want it to Just Work, which is where
Apple gets it right with a Unix based operating system, albeit with a
increasingly proprietary desktop on a very limited subset of hardware. When
there's a Linux-based desktop that does that, a decent part of the battle
will be won.
So, on the grounds that if we 'continue to do what we have always
done', we 'get what we always got', what then?
I think that the major problem is this: MS and Windows is SO ingrained
into the public consciousness (fuelled by what certainly in the past
were undoubted very rapacious and dubious business practices) that's
it's going to be a VERY hard job to change public perception.
The general public ARE swayed by what they see advertised, whether on TV
or in magazines. All the people who go for "designer" label clothing
etc. THEY are the sort of people who drift along to PC World and get
sold - a Windows machine, a) because there is no choice and b) because
they don't know and don't care whether Linux exists or not.
I think that there does have to be some sort of advertising campaign - I
would suggest on the security and no viruses angle - but until that
happens them I'm afraid that Linux is going to be the preserve of server
applications and the already converted...
--
ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
