Fwd: [Promotion] wake up... a news portal for free software?

[Thilo Pfennig]

2006/2/11, Tom Chance <tom at acrewoods.net>:
>
>
> To get people from the borders of the movement to jump in we need to
> provide a
> space where they feel comfortable working (so not mailing lists and
> SVN/CVS).
> We need to provide the tools and documentation so that they can quickly
> find
> useful jobs to do and find out how to do them well.


You are right. What inspired me was Launchpad and especially Rosetta
project. many of the subscribers will know that this is a project for very
easy translating software. I managed to do it in 5 minutes. In GNOME Germany
I found the situation that the only information of how to help translation
was: Here is the IRC channel and here is the mailing list.

 GNOME.org also is bad in contact information. Look at
http://www.gnome.org/contact/ .

KDE.org is essentially better: http://www.kde.org/contact/ but also not
perfect, still.

I understand that mailing lists have a traditional value, but i'd rather
suggest that we prefer using ticket systems and present a few mail adresses
- and that those might be answered by a bunch of people. That could even  be
hundreds! They can filter and forward or tag the incoming messages. - But I
do not want to get too much into the details of the websites.

What does "contact mean"? I would guide users in a away that you know more
and more about them. A flat structure is better, but from contact you must
find out what a "visitor" wants:

1. he is a journalist want some specific information or a person to speak to
(for an interview or a short telephone call)
2. He is a Windows or Mac user being interested in the free desktop.
3. He is already a GNOME user and wants to get updated what is new and what
else he can do with GNOME.
4. He is a KDE or GNOME user and wants to switch to GNOME or KDE. ;-)
5. He is a Windows/Mac programmer being interested in programming with
Gtk/Qt
6. He is somebody who wants to use KDE/GNOME in the organization or company
he is working in.
7. He is a Linux/BSD programmer that wants some technical details.
8. He is a GNOME/KDE user and wants to report  a bug.
9. He is a GNOME/KDE user and wants some documentation or help.
10. He is an industrial leader that wants to invest in GNOME/KDE (I think of
companies like Nokia) or to witch to a free software model.

All this visitors need to be satisfied in one way or the other. Right now
the homepages do look more like everybody is already a geek and he should
better not use KDE/GNOME if he is not willing to become one.

Honestly I do not understand the resistance that is there if one wants to
change that attitude. Is it that we are used to swim in our community and
know how each other "smells"? I think a task the free desktop have in their
future is to emancipate more and more from the companies that earn their
money fro  the desktops and als give back money. In the interest if the
companies itself. The interestes of comapnies like Sun, Red Hat and
Trolltech migth differ, but if free software and free desktops shall
succeed, ti is necessary that the desktops can live their own interests. I
see similearieties here to comapnies like Sony that do have entertainment
divisions but also divisions for multimedia devices. Those companies will
have a hard time because thwary each other. In this emancipation I see the
cooperation of free desktops as an important step.

if we take the licensing situation of Qt today one could easily adopt the
principles of the GNOME Foundation to be to assist KDE: "to create a
computing platform for use by the general public that is completely free
software." (http://foundation.gnome.org/). the question should be: By what
means? The goals never stated that Gtk should be prefered. The cultures of
both desktops have developed differently, though.

What are the essential questions for collaborative marketing? How do we
reach our goals. What are our goals? I think we  often think we already know
the answers to such simple questions, but I think there are many differences
in both communities (not between, but also inside KDE and GNOME), what our
goals should be. I think the question of Qt vs. Gtk is not important for the
user. But many,many geeks think that it is INDEED important. I admit that
those geeks are also users. I think there are parts of our culture that are
brilliant, but some are not. I think the parts that are everything but
brilliant should change.

Thilo
--
http://vinci.wordpress.com
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