[Linux-aus] Marketing Linux

[James Purser]

On Sun, 2007-04-22 at 19:05 +1000, linuxaus.1.tracyanne at spamgourmet.com
wrote:
> To all of those people who state that there are much better ways of marketing 
> linux than the txu500 project, I have this question.
> 
> If there are better ways, then why is no one persuing those "better ways"? why
> are you not getting together a team to fund those "better ways"? Why is it that
> now that someone has had the intestinal fortitude to actually put together a project
> to attempt to market Linux, that suddenly so many people are so knowledgable of
> what are better ways to promote Linux?

Before you go throwing around accusations of "lack of intestinal
fortitude", hows about having a look where people are coming from.
Firstly, Linux Australia couldn't support this. Its an american event,
with extremely limited international appeal and as such there are better
things to do with the money closer to home.

Secondly, we are actually working on projects of our own to help promote
Linux and FOSS. Up until a month ago I was running a fortnightly online
radio show. Chris Smart and co are running the makethemove web site.
Last month a local business man named Ashley Maher did a fifty minute
presentation to the local small business club.

While the big flashy ads like the ones Novel have ripped off are cool
and all, but we'd be better served by documentary type projects, long
slow discussions with main stream journos and so on. You have to
remember, we are not a super rich organisation. Our main income stream
is the LA conference and we try to do the best we can with the resources
we have.

> If you really do have a better way of promoting Linux, lets hear it. It's really easy
> to shoot down other peoples ideas, but it's not quite so easy to come up with good 
> ones of your own. So I say lets hear those "better ways". I will most certainly 
> do all I can to promote them if they really are better.

Define better. We've already had discussions about tv advertising and
targeted media campaigns as well as things such as addresses to the
National Press Club and such. Again the first problem with the tux500
project is that it is severely focused on Americans and cannot be
transported across the world.

> And lets not hear any claims that word of mouth is one of those better ways. What has 
> word of mouth got us other than a marginalised geeky, ordinary people needn't apply image.
> We don't even rate alongside Apple Macintosh, and it has at best 10% of the Desktop market.

Sorry to dissappoint but word of mouth is a wonderful thing, if managed
correctly. Any marketer will tell you that once you have a good word of
mouth campaign going, it can be worth money in the bank.

I really do appreciate your enthusiasm for promoting Linux and FOSS, and
yes I do share some of your frustrations, as the idea of a big campaign
bringing the good word of Linux to the country is attracitive, you just
have to be a little bit more pragmatic.
-- 
James Purser
Ordinary Committee Member
Linux Australia
http://www.linux.org.au
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