Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Sean Diggity

Sat Mar 24 11:34:45 -0700 2007

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Marketing is, pretty much by definition, deception.  Novell obviously won't mention GNU or the FSF and that's a BAD thing because they're obviously too ashamed to bring it up.  The values embodied in free software aren't on the agenda; the productivity and quality gains from open source development are Novell's priority (nothing more than a means to an end).  I'm not especially happy that Novell brings clients in with their marketing that are generally leeching off of the free software community.  I could go on, but it's not even worth it. Novell's recent actions speak for themselves.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Beryllium Sphere(r)

Sat Mar 24 14:38:36 -0700 2007

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A TV ad is sales, not marketing. Salespeople have pulled a really good sales job in convincing people that sales is the same as maketing.

Done right, which maybe happens somewhere, marketing is impedance matching between company and customers to keep information from bouncing off the interface.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Roy Schestowitz

Sun Mar 25 07:37:04 -0700 2007

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Novell obviously won't mention GNU or the FSF and
that's a BAD thing because they're obviously too ashamed to bring it up.

To be fair, many other distributor are guilty as well (yes, the same sin!). If you visit some Linux forums these days, you'll find that some people use "Ubuntu OS", not quite realising that they use GNU/Linux.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

GuyFawkes

Sat Mar 24 16:06:13 -0700 2007

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I've seen multi-million dollar companies launched and be hugely successful, I've seem some struggle, and one or two bomb, myself I've been successful a couple of times, usually I struggle, sometimes I bombed.

Take it from me, if you want to kill a product let the engineers do the marketing and PR, and I am an engineer, so not having a go.

If you want a product to bomb just start going on about GNU recursive acronyms, Linux, which ain't gnu, and so on and so forth.

If you want a product to fly give it a single identifying name, and make sure than name has some visual cortex association in the brain of joe average, Windows is one, Corvette is another, Zippo is another, Coke is another. All encompass a wide variety, Windows 1.01 to Vista for example, nothing in common except the name, and that is the point.

If you want anyone except your cronies to talk about you then you need to court the media, that means supplying them with broadcast quality stock logos, graphics, potted bios, fact sheets, and of course ready written and ready edited broadcast quality audio and video media.

These are facts of life. No journo is going to go the extra mile and do his own legwork to make you look good, not their job, only time they will go the extra mile is if you get drunk and crash and illegally imported ferrari....

Marketing is not evil, it can be, but it is not inherently evil, a bumble bees colouration is marketing, getting laid is marketing, Gerald Ratner saying at a speech that his (jewellery store chain) products were "crap" is marketing. (that "crap" comment cost him 500 million pounds BTW)

Now for something contentious, but nevertheless honest.

I have never met RMS, so my total experience of his is based upon what I have read of him, some of this is written by himself, some by others writing about him.

My honest opinion is that the thing that RMS markets the most is RMS.

I could be utterly wrong in every way to the nth degree, nevertheless that is the impression I have always been left with, so if the aim is to promote GNU or Linux or FSF or something else it certainly never worked on me.

I've been down this road, worked my ass off for a charitable organisation that did amazing work and truly transformed the lives of people who suffered serious injuries, eventually one of those fly on the wall TV programmes offered to do a whole show on them, which had ALL of us worried, because the incumbent leaders, who had made the charity everything it was and who had done amazing work, were no longer suitable (I must stress, NONE of us wanted the job) and should have stood aside and let someone more savvy take the reins, instead this guy insists on slapping the programme director about the face with a raw haddock, so the director made a programme about a bunch of freaks, basically the 5 members of the committee, and dealt the charity a blow that it has never been able to recover from. Lifetime members left in droves after that show aired.

Go to the microsoft site, look here http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/gallery.mspx

How to do it right, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, imitate microsoft, then maybe it will be the year Linux conquers the desktop.

Call it LINUX and NOTHING ELSE, EVER, and NEVER EVER EVER talk about GNU vs the kernel and Gnome vs KDE and vi vs emacs or anything else, and stick to the cute Tux logo and make it a centrepiece like the playboy bunny.

NEVER EVER EVER let engineers talk to the press, customers, or anyone else outside the system. We are a total nightmare, we do not think like joe public, we do not speak the same language, we do not come from the same planet.

LINUX is a broad church, or it SHOULD be, not just a glee club for leet coders and a horde of users, there are literally MILLIONS of linux users out there who cannot code for shit and can't tell a kernel from a library, but they have other vastly useful talents that Linux desperately needs, but completely ignores, like for example graphics and logos, poxy usenet warez sites manage to get ass kicking logos designed for free.

Get hip with the media, play microsoft and others at their own game, one message, oft repeated, nice and simple with 99.99% of the work already done for the journos, they will love you for it and any time there is a slack news day you WILL get extra column inches, instead of dedicating them to MS giving chairs with "why are you late" to people queuing for the Sony PS3 launch here in the UK.

WHEN you hear Steve Ballmer talking about Caldera DOS being different from DR DOS being different from QDOS, and QDOS not meaning Quick and dirty operating system, THEN and ONLY THEN is it safe to start whining on about Linus Torvalds only contributing the kernel etc etc etc.

Linux is LITERALLY FREE, and yet the vast majority of people and businesses would rather PAY GOOD MONEY for another, arguably inferior product, when you LITERALLY CANNOT GIVE SOMETHING AWAY, you are the dictionary definition of marketing gone wrong.

In closing, three points.

1/ No, I'm not after the job or any part of it, Linux needs spokespersons like me like a hole in the head.

2/ This is not an attack directed at Bruce or anyone else, just throwing something into the ring for discussion.

3/ It may well be that I know as little about successful marketing strategies as I know about kernel hacking.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Charles E Hill

Sat Mar 24 19:43:25 -0700 2007

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IBM did a good job with their advertisements.  Very nice.

However, it is hard to market "Linux" when you can't really get "Linux".  What you get is a distribution, like Red Hat, Novell, Ubuntu or Linspire.

Just as bad as trying to explain Gnu's Not Unix to a non-geek, is trying to explain the difference between Red Hat and Linux.  I've had a couple of people see me use Linux (Slackware or Kubuntu) on my system and say "Oh, you use Red Hat?  How is that?".

I usually take one sentence to explain distributions, trying not to get hung up on it.  (Linux == Car, Red Hat == Ford).  Then explain the benefits of Linux.  The big ones being no anti-virus needed, no spyware issues and free.

My point being, the real job of advertising Linux belongs to the distribution and hardware vendors.  Everyone else is just asking for trouble.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Tracy Anne

Sat Mar 24 21:25:59 -0700 2007

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quote:: IBM did a good job with their advertisements. Very nice. ::quote

Terrible ad typical Marketing think, misses the point completely, makes it look like IBM are selling Autistic boys.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Tracy Anne

Sat Mar 24 21:26:49 -0700 2007

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Excellent points.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Michael L. Dean

Sun Mar 25 01:54:57 -0700 2007

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IN MY OPINION.  GPL v3 will fork open source Yet Again and whether or not Linus buys it - so far he hasn't - we have  decided to focus on BSD/Apache style licensed software in our company.  We believe this license is more impervious to the efforts of aggressive patent holding multi-nationals such as IBM, HP and Microsoft.   Many folks must also believe this as well, because most of the better thriving open source entities are BSD -- Apache Foundation & Postgresql come to mind.   Microsoft has shown us the power of marketing, in great clarity, for decades.  In my opinion, Microsoft does not sit still and  worry about patents, trademarks or copyrights -- it just steals them at will and makes others challenge their collective theft.  Sometimes they pay out, and usually the companies they steal from do not survive.  

The biggest mistake open source companies do is emulate Microsoft products, or figure out how they can get Microsoft products to run on Linux.  Most of Microsofts products were bought from other companies, and once they are processed by the Big Cow become horribly mediocre and unfit for emulation.  But not their marketing techniques, which are competent. 

But even with competent marketing Google has demonstrated Microsoft's vulnerability.   In essence, the vulnerability of Microsoft and Linux/Open Source are the same.   Two crabs pulling the other down.  

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

femto

Sun Mar 25 04:13:46 -0700 2007

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Surely the best marketing is when someone you trust (son, father, daughter, mother, best friend, ...) sits down for an hour, to one on one explain what the pros and cons are and answer any questions? If the product is any good it will then have one more user.

It's not mass marketing (unless enough people do it), but surely any marketer would kill for that sort of exposure?

Marketing - sales vs. marketing

Michael L. Dean

Sun Mar 25 08:44:03 -0700 2007

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Marketing is the preparation of a coherent  benefits oriented story imparted about a decent product with its own brand, available now for a fair price; and practiced & delivered by a professional salesperson to an interested prospect or audience in a well thought out way.   By turning benefits into a sound Return On Investment  argument , sales are made. 

In the absence of the sales component, such as practiced by cutthroat sleazy telecoms like Verizon, the individual is no more than a consumer.  Without the marketing component, such as practiced by most community oriented open source folks, you have customers without a real coherent product.   Commercial distros -- Linspire and Xandros desktops and Red Hat, Novell Suse & Solaris come close.  The ubuntu folks, under the guidance of a millionaire with a goal, will eventually get there.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Simon

Sun Mar 25 13:56:44 -0700 2007

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Surely the issue with copying Microsoft's marketing philosophy, is that it costs shed loads of money to market like Microsoft.

They spent 700 million USD between the launches of Windows XP and XBox. Looking at the Linux field, only IBM and Oracle have those kind of resources to play with.

There is good "Linux" marketing out there, Novell do it, Redhat do it, IBM do it, Oracle do it. The point being "Linux marketing" is a bit like marketing the diesel engine, sure you might do it as part of marketing a car, or even a car maker, but no one will market "Linux", for the same reason no one markets "Diesel engines".

Although without explicit marketing, I suspect more people know of "Linus", than know who "Rudolf Christian Karl" was.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Tracy Anne

Sun Mar 25 15:09:16 -0700 2007

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I take it you are referring the the bloke who invented the Diesel engine. It doesn't necessarily take truck loads of money to do good marketing. Good marketing is about creating an image, sometimes that image is false (Microsoft) even though initially it rings true. For example there is a series of Microsoft advertisement currently running in Australia, that describe Microsoft in terms of being concerned about our community and employment and helping small business. On the face of it it's true, but nowhere does it mention the on going high cost to the business, the community, and how the very cost of Microsoft's products reduce the number of people a small company can employ. The reason that Microsoft must continue to spend huge sums of money on it's marketing is to continually produce new advertisements that ring true initially, so that when the reality of using Microsoft products kick in, the image can be repolished, to keep the tarnish of reality off of it.

Now if Linux can be marketed in such a way that all of it's benefits can be used to create an image that not only rings true but is true. If one can do this, and we are dealing here with a product that is inherently beneficial, the maintenance of the image against FUD will will be orders of magnitude lower than the budget required to keep the image of an inherently poor product clean, and the FUD to fight an inherently good product.

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

GuyFawkes

Sun Mar 25 16:00:40 -0700 2007

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"Surely the issue with copying Microsoft's marketing philosophy, is that it costs shed loads of money to market like Microsoft."

MS marketing _philosophy_ is free, the money went on buying prime time slots, superbowl etc, which mac did too as I recall....

Second Life manages to stay in the media at least once a week...

"There is good "Linux" marketing out there, Novell do it, Redhat do it, IBM do it, Oracle do it. The point being "Linux marketing" is a bit like marketing the diesel engine, sure you might do it as part of marketing a car, or even a car maker, but no one will market "Linux", for the same reason no one markets "Diesel engines"."

You give a classic example that you think makes your case, but actually makes my case.

LOTS of people actively market "Diesel engines", it is a multi-billion dollar global business, but since you did not know this it is safe to assume you are a car driver, and therefore not the target audience, and therefore not marketed to, ergo you think marketing diesel engines doesn't happen.

Second Life don't market themselves to you, or us, they market themselves to journalists, and they do it so successfully the journalists fulfil their part of the symbiotic / parasitic relationship and pass on the good news to us, whether it is reuters new virtual office, flying penises or virtual real estate agencies going online.

I just flicked through this months copy of Embedded System Engineering mag, couldn't see a single MS / windows logo anywhere, not even one, but there is an interesting article about power cycling, data loss, and transactional file systems that talks about winxp and linux etc, and there are two tux logos on different adverts, and please don't dismiss it because of the "embedded", some of this stuff is gigahertz pentium class cpus, some of it even more powerful than that.

"Although without explicit marketing, I suspect more people know of "Linus", than know who "Rudolf Christian Karl" was."

Try it on a random selection and demographic of complete strangers, seriously, please do, most will give you blank stares, some will eventually have a face clearing and eureka moment and say "you mean the guy with the blanket in Peanuts and Charlie Brown?"

How many diesel (car) mechanics do you think know that there were diesel aircraft engines in service 50 years ago? or two stroke diesels? or the seventies mercedes C111 diesel that did 200 mph at le mans?

How many Windows computer owners and users do you think know what Microsoft Dynamics is? I'm guessing you're a linux fanboy (as am I) and wonder if you are aware of Microsofts own port25 domain, where there are articles such as "Microsoft + GPL = Match made in heaven" (http://www.onlamp.com/onlamp/port25/) but then again if you aren't the target you won't be aware of it.

Calling Bruce, were you aware of http://www.onlamp.com/onlamp/port25/?
Because one would have though you and the FSF etc would have it bookmarked in your favourites. If not, they WHY not is a key issue in your very ability to fight your corner.

(port25.technet is MS own open source software lab website, onlamp is always heavily linked to from it, onlamp being an o'reilly site)

Marketing - Linux vs FOSS

Simon

Mon Mar 26 01:16:37 -0700 2007

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LOTS of people actively market "Diesel engines", it is a multi-billion dollar global business, but since you did not know this it is safe to assume you are a car driver, and therefore not the target audience, and therefore not marketed to, ergo you think marketing diesel engines doesn't happen.

Not my experience of working for the company that designed some of the current range of high end Diesel engines. It is a small enough field that most of the folk know roughly what is available, just as most people likely to require a kernel know exactly what Linux is. Indeed I suspect in that sense Linux marketing is very successful.