Fwd: [Promotion] Rolling up things

[Thilo Pfennig]

2006/12/17, Jeff Waugh <jdub at perkypants.org>:

> 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). :-)

Ah really. Couly you elaborate.


> I think the idea of a "common marketing strategy" between GNOME and KDE is
> more of a feel-good idea than something genuinely useful.

I tend to think more of it as the goal of a common desktop user
experience. What we have right now are many software projects that at
best are part of either KDE or GNOME. All the work that is done by
freedesktop.org to get things like Copy & Paste working is actuall a
result of different marketing or no marketing at all. by that i don`t
mean telling people that your own software is the best but the idea
and the action to bring a software to the user,

I think right now companies and some projects have a marketing
strategy like Red Hat, Novell, Mozilla, Mysql, Apache, Wikimedia, MPEG
group (MP3) or DVD+RW Alliance or the RIAA. They all follow marketing
strategies and some combine forces because they know that they do not
have a chance to convince customers if they just think about their own
projects. The technologies that dominate our technical environment
where successfull because a company or a group had a vision which they
followed. I think Mozilla is a good example of how one can work
together in an open source project wihout choosing to use the same
means and the MPEG group.

 I think technically many things are on a good way - and lets not
forget that Windows never made it because it was technically superior
but because of is marketing. I think the greatest lack we have is that
of a common vision and action. Free software projects have much in
common but still every small software projects does its own marketing
what often means that there is no marketing at all.

The late problems of Mozilla vs. Debian all come from different
marketing. Ok, you can say the roots are ion differen philosophy, but
the real roots are in tow projects that share only the code but did
not talk about objectives. Novells move towards Microsoft which gets a
lot of negative feedback outside the company is also a direct result
in Novell doing its own marketing.

I think that we are not going to be very sucessfull if we just think:
We share some code but in the end everybody does what he likes with
it. I think: Yes, this is possible and this is really the freedom of
free software. BUT: Being able to do so does not mean that it is the
best strategy, the best for the users or the best for the progress to
do this. If somebody or some company want to do this: Ok, but if the
goal is to increase the free desktops market share you have to think
about more as just your software and also I think more as just about
your desktop environment.

KDE and GNOME both believe that it is more usefull to do marketing
together as if each application would do just its own thing. But what
are people using? They may have a KDE desktop with a Mozilla browser
or a GNOME desktop with konqueror (or webkit/Safari) as the browser
and K3b as burning application and OpenOffice.org. That means that
from the users perspective this KDE or GNOME is of no interest - she
might prefer one interface over the other - but also preferences
change.

My conclusion is that it just makes no sense if all these applications
do their own marketing and just do a little cooperation. If I install
GNOME desktops and do marketing - and people want to use a replacement
for Office I would suggest OpenOffice.org - and then I am in another
sphere. I would have to suggest Gnumeric and Abiword if I would want
to make a GNOME only marketing. So on a support level there are just
users and solutions - and I would prefere free (desktop) solutions.
because THAT makes sense. It just does not make sense to market GNOME,
KDE, Firefox or OpenOffice.org independently. Because the software
world is so interdependent.

Credible free desktop marketing should take all solutions into
account. Some of the marketing goals of GNOME wanted to target ISVs -
but these are independent - so if they are good they are not
interested doing marketing for either GNOME or KDE - they server their
customers interest.

I think marekting one applications or one desktop environment is more
traditional thinking like proprietary software companies do. They want
their product out. But I also think that maybe the problem are neither
the ISVs nor the customers, but the communities and developers. If we
do not talk about common objectives the result will always be a lot of
redundant work. This is why it is sometimes easier to switch between
proprietary mail clients for example, while switching between
Thunderbird and Evolution is hell - or OpenOffice.org does no care to
be able to import Gnumeric files. It all looks like this is just about
motivating developers, but the truth is that most projects care more
about being successful in pulling WIndows users through as to how
these users could easily switch between applications. Jealousy! And
that happens in projects which are open and on paper advertise open
standards. What I try to say is that is no happening by accident but
that those things happen ineherently because of competing projects and
marketings strategies. You can solve one problem after the other on a
technical level as long as anybody really cares. But the projects will
continue to produce more and more of those problems - and those are
tending to become more complex. I have had too much troubles with
those problems in the past.

So: Technically on  many levels we can be satisfied with what we have
accomplished so far - but there is no common free desktop user
experience. And this is in my believe on of the main reasons why many
people do not use free desktops - they do not want to make choices -
they only want a desktop and software that serves their needs. Simple
as that.


Thilo




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