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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] Take a look at Linux1.no
From:       Tom Chance <tom () acrewoods ! net>
Date:       2006-06-16 22:30:32
Message-ID: 200606162330.32426.tom () acrewoods ! net
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Ahoy,

On Friday 16 June 2006 22:39, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> negative campaigning and comparative marketing are two of the weakest forms
> of marketing one can do. and in this case it also sends out a very negative
> message to those who aren't already using kde or gnome. it also severely
> damages our (KDE's) ability to network in the industry at large and engage
> usefully (for KDE) in efforts such as freedesktop.org. in other words, the
> "anti-GNOME" approach that has been tried at times in the past has caused
> real and non-negligable damage to the project. much/most of it has been
> fixed now, but it's taken us a few years to do that.
> 
> it is absolutely fatal for us to engage in a marketing war against each
> other at this time.

Hammer hits nail's head. Or something like that.

We have very limited media exposure at the moment, especially in publications 
that reach our new target markets (small and medium businesses, third-party 
developers, early adopters). We can convey at most three or four core 
messages in any given press release, interview, promotional leaflet and trade 
show talk. With web forum discussions and the like you have a bit more space 
but you still want to keep people's attention and make them want KDE.

The question is: do we want to focus on the positives about KDE, or do we want 
to leave space to knock down GNOME with comparisons? Which makes us look 
better and convinces people to choose KDE?

Not only does knocking GNOME harm our reputation and our ability to work with 
them, it also harms KDE directly because some of our key strengths lie in (a) 
our cooperation with GNOME, (b) our shared free software heritage, and (c) 
the fact that if somebody ends up using GNOME but running K3B and Digikam 
that's a win for KDE, just not as big a win as them going for the whole 
package. Negative marketing makes us look like we've got nothing good of our 
own to go on, and can suggest contempt for people who make perfectly 
reasonable decisions to go elsewhere.

When compiling the list of "top ten reasons to switch from Windows to 
Linux+KDE" you might want to say, for example, that "KDE has all this amazing 
kio technology unlike Windows, MacOSX and GNOME" but that's about as far as 
I'd ever go.

Kind regards,
Tom

-- 
I'll give £100 to People & Planet if 20 people give £10.
Help me help this amazing student activist network!
http://www.pledgebank.com/help-pnp
 
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