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. s/ -- Twitter: @sfgreenwood "Is this your sanderling?"
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