Hi, I just want to share an idea that i had. The idea was to create a common news portal for free software projects. I do NOT mean Yet Another News Portal. What I mean is a portal where free software projects like GNOME, KDE <a href="http://Fredesktop.org">Fredesktop.org</a> would register and put their news in instead of just like today * send announcements by mail * put them on the website * have some rdf/atom feeds available. Some projects or part of projects might already do some more professional PR, but I think that distributing news should not be the business of developers, nor should the free software projects should depend so much on classical non-free media. Wikinews is not helpful I must say, they are doing a bad job because of the software and the wrong goals the have. My vision is that the news portal which I would call "Jabana" at this point would help do the following: * Even the small projects could post their news and could get help from whoever they want (other project members, journalists, members of their desktop environment organisation) * This news portal should be from the community for the community, * it should  also be the number one source for journalists and press agencies. Journalists should be able to rely on this source. * security updates should be distributed quickly. * The range of the news should get extended * In the future I would also expect this project to be able to act as an agent for interview partners if press agencies like to speak to somebody It was said to see that the new major release of one of the projects I am involved (MoinMoin wiki) not being covered by any media at all. But also the new "Ekiga" is recognized by some media sources, but with a very short range. There is a knowledge about how to deal with media that can be shared. But this is only shared to a specific extend. Rigth now we are still very community-centered and i think that is the reason why we are still behind our goals. We must learn to speak the language that more people do understand and to talk to the right people and media. This would enable us to be covered better and more often than nowadays. We see many small companies with inferior software getting covered at CNN as wondeful innovations - or think about Skype... while the free software projects do a great work without being mentioned at all. And this is true also for organisations like the Apache foundation and others... not mentioning smaller projects like K3b (but look how Nero is covered) or Evolution I think that Firefox and Thunderbird are doing a relatively good job. Who likes to help with this? For organising I already have created a wiki that does not have much text right now: <a href="http://jabana.alternativ.net/">http://jabana.alternativ.net/</a> I would like to start here with Freedesktop but intend to also contact <a href="http://mozilla.org">mozilla.org</a>, <a href="http://apache.org">apache.org</a> and others. Right now everything is open (who would be in charge, where it will be hosted, what software to use) But I would expect this to be a nice experiment to have the best of all free software/ open source worlds to really make a project that stands out and where we could show that we can and will work together and what we will be able to do. I think nobody here will say that public relations of freee software projects are effectual? It is an interesting question how we should deal with the public. My experience is, that many of us have adapted to the situation that we are some kind of freaks and nobody outside really would care about free software. I really think that the situation really changed with the Spread Firefox campaign. Who would ever have thought that a new version of a free software browser would be so highly anticipated by a broad media, let's say 6-7 years ago where we just had a simple Mozilla and we were happy that we finally had a least one usable free software browser. Many distributions shipped Netscape 4.x at that time. What is bugging me is that there still seems to be two different perspectives: In the free software world we read some news sources and we know what new and exciting development is on the way. I guess at least the people here on this list know these things, too. On the other hand if you watch television or read newspapers nobody seems to even recognize these things. I had the same experience with the anti software patent actions here in Europe.  People in the free software community saw many ugly things happening in politics that  could lead to the instalation of real software patents but that most of the media did not even realize that there was a tough fight was going on. What I want to say is, that it is not only the range that is missing but there really still is a huge gap in the conception of the importance of subjects. The cause might be that the common understanding of coherences between politics and technology is very much underdeveloped in society (most importantly the understanding of journalists who are those who transport the messages, but only transport what they understand or where they at least think is some kind of importance). To come to an end: Good press relations are only one part of better marketing of a free desktop and free software, but it is an important one. If we would get more public recognition in the media everything could be much more easy. i think free software has a good reputation till now. That's where we should build uppon. ciao, Thilo -- <a href="http://vinci.wordpress.com">http://vinci.wordpress.com</a>