Fwd: [Promotion] Rolling up things

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Thilo Pfennig">

> We should/could distinguish between markets and audiences. I think very
> general everbody is a potential user, but maybe GNOMEs 10x10 goal led us
> to a wrong direction? Maybe we should rather try to get 90% on small
> markets for our niche to survive and from where to grow?

10x10 was raised as a thought experiment more than anything. It turns out
that we're extremely likely to achieve it, though via unexpected means (at
the time). :-)


I think the idea of a "common marketing strategy" between GNOME and KDE is
more of a feel-good idea than something genuinely useful. Many of us like
the idea of GNOME and KDE collaborating on things, or at least not competing
on otherwise common ground. That's cool, but inter-organisation coordination
is even harder than intra-organisational coordination -- we should pick our
"fights" (where we put our effort) on the collaboration front even more
carefully than how we compete with our true opposition.

Are "marketing" or "advertising" really the most useful things for us to
collaborate on? Is raising the public profile of freedesktop.org useful?
Certainly the existence of freedesktop.org and participation in it are
extremely useful to us, within the community, but what value does it have
beyond (for us, and for those outside)?


Some of these collaboration efforts are red herrings, and I tend to think
this form has a particularly bad shiny-to-useful ratio. Much of our time
would be better spent kicking arse in our own projects, while taking due
care to avoid causing problems across the community (and that care extends
far beyond just GNOME and KDE).

Just my thoughts. I don't want to dump stop energy on the work happening in
this area, but I did want to present another set of questions / thoughts
about what we're doing.

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia           http://lca2007.linux.org.au/
 
   "And if you think this fucking little tub of gold popcorn is going to
    remotely make up for everything we've suffered, you're sadly fucking
                            mistaken!" - Gollum